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CHILDREN OF GIBEON 


a movei 


' By WALTEE BESANT 


AUTHOR OP 

‘*ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OP MEN ” “ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR” 
“DOROTHY FORSTER” “FIFTY YEARS AGO ” 

^ “hERR PAULUS” ETC. 


r * 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE 


TZ^ 

,2>4C5Gi-1 


24553 


By WALTER BESANT. 


All in a Garden Fair. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

All Sorts and Conditions of Men. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 
60 cents; 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

Armorel of Lyonesse. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 60 cents; 
12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

^^hildren of Gibeon. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents; 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 
Dorothy Forster. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

Fifty Years Ago. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, |2 50. 

For Faith and Freedom. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents; 
12ino, Cloth, |1 25. 

Herr Paulus. 8vo, Paper, 35 cents. 

Katherine Regina. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

Life of Coligny. 32mo, Paper, 25 cents; Cloth, 40 cents. 
Self or Bearer. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

The Bell of St. Paul’s. 8vo, Paper, 35 cents; 12mo, Cloth. 
(In Press . ) 

The Holy Rose. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 

The Inner House. 8vo, Paper, 30 cents. 

The World Went Very Well Then. Illustrated. 4to, 
Paper, 25 cents; 12mo, Cloth, $1 25. 

To Call Her Mine. Illustrated. 4to, Paper, 20 cents. 
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Published by HAllPER & BROTHERS, New York. 


tW Any of the above worke will he aent by mail, pottage prepaid, to any part 
of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price. 



CONTENTS, 


PROLOGUE. 

PART I. 

Pags 

Polly-which-is-Marla 1 

PART II. 

The Stroke of Fate 13 

BOOK I. 

Chapter 

I. At Nine o’Clock 19 

II. Which IS my Sister? 29 

III. Jack Conyers 39 

IV. The Haven of Rest 48 

Y. The Law of Elevenpence Ha’penny 61 

VI. An Unlucky Day 72 

Yll. After Melenda 80 

VIII. Alicia 86 

IX. Sam 90 

X. The Great Renunciation 101 

BOOK IL 

I. “I AM Your Sister”. 112 

II. The City of Hogsden 125 

III. On Curls and Dimples 135 

IV. Lotty’s Romance 142 

V. A Real Day’s Work 160 

VI. Behind St. Luke’s 167 

VII. The Professor of Yiddish 179 

VIII. Lotty’s Foolish Dream 188 


IV 


CONTENTS. 


Chapter Page 

IX. Showing How the Band Played 198 

X. The Reverend Randal Smith 209 

XL A Dead Man’s Steps 217 

XII. The Wooing of the Sphinx 229 

XIII. A Useless Crime 235 

XIV. Ask me no More 244 

XV. Brother Joe’s Discovert 254 

XVI. The Earthly Tract Society 260 

XVII. The Step Without 271 

XVIII. Le Pere Prodigue 284 

XIX. In the Churchyard 297 

XX. The Lady with the Parasol 307 

XXL A Friendly Father 817 

XXII. The Doctor Speaks 326 

XXIII. How Melenda was Drilled 334 

XXIV. Melenda is Vanquished 347 

XXV. Lizzie’s Temptation 357 

XXVI. No Defence 366 

XXVII. Alicia 373 

XXVIII. Return, 0 Shulamite! 378 

XXIX. The Last Evening 389 

XXX. The Bishop’s Death-bed 396 

XXXI. HoxME Again 410 

XXXII. The Finding of the Inquest 421 

XXXIII. Coming of Age 434 

CHAPTER THE LAST. Valentine Speaks 443 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON 


PEOLOGUE. 


PART 1. 

POLLY-WHICH-IS-MARLA. 

“Sit down, Hester, and let us talk. It is seventeen years 
since you saw me last.” 

“ It isn’t tke time I grudge, my lady,” Hester replied, plung- 
ing her bare arms into the soapsuds ; “ it isn’t the time, hut the 
things are promised, and a laundress’s word is her work. If she 
breaks her word, it’s leave the things and change the washing. 
And a lovely drying day.” 

She spoke with two pins between her lips. People of her 
walk in life, unless they happen to be Chinamen, always while 
they are standing at the washtub carry two pins in the corner 
of the mouth — they are not even safety pins ; and the practice 
gives them for the time a curious thickness of speech. 

“ Let me talk and work at the same time, my lady, though it 
is such a long, long time since last I set eyes upon you ; and a 
beautiful little creature you were, to be sure. Lor’ a me !” 

She was a woman of five or six and thirty : country-bred, as 
you could very easily tell by the rosy hue of her cheek and by 
its amplitude, by her figure, full and comely, and by her breadth 
of shoulder. The London air — it is the fog in it, perhaps, or 
the smoke in it — produces in the second and all succeeding 
generations a diminishing effect : it narrows and slopes the 
shoulders ; it contracts the figure, it shortens the stature, and it 
1 


2 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


makes the features small; in fact, it makes the London girl 
small all over, yet it does not leave her without charms of her 
own, as is daily testified by many. This woman was a big 
woman, looking still as if she was fresh from field and country 
lane ; her forehead was lined, her mouth was drawn — but this 
might be due to the presence of the two pins ; her eyes were 
limpid and full and in color brown, something like the eyes of 
a hare when it is not frightened. They were set and framed 
in a network of lines and crows’-feet, and when she was alone 
they had a trick of hardening. This may have been caused by 
trouble, or perhaps it was only the natural result of the weekly 
arithmetical exercise peculiar to her profession, and worthy of a 
Babbage, in which the good woman had to enumerate, divide 
out, add up, and make to come right, all the socks, handkerchiefs, 
shirts, collars, and cuffs intrusted to her care. As for her feat- 
ures, they were plain and even rugged. A working-woman 
may very naturally acquire, by the age of six-and-thirty, from 
her life of struggle and work, a very considerable amount of 
hardness. But with Hester the ruggedness seemed part of the 
original mould, as if Nature had left the face in the rough with- 
out the final stroke of the chisel. I do not think that Hester 
had ever been beautiful ; but by reason of her hair, which was 
still plentiful, and of a warm red color, and her limpid eyes, she 
may have been in her youth pleasing to look upon. It seems a 
fond thing to speculate upon the possible beauty of a washer- 
woman in the vanished days when she was young. But it has 
a certain interest for us, because she had children with whom 
we have to do, and it is a melancholy reflection that so little in- 
terest is generally taken in the past beauty of a woman, whether 
she be a washerwoman or a duchess. 

As for her expression, it w^as grave and even sad at times : 
and when she was hanging out the clothes, or when she was 
ironing, or whenever there were no pins in her mouth, her lips 
had a habit of silently monologuizing, moving in the manner of 
one who speaks with great rapidity, but with no audible utter- 
ance. What she said in these soliloquies one knows not ; per- 
haps she was rehearsing the weekly returns, as, “ Six p’r o’ 
socks, six ; ten handkerchiefs, ten ; seven shirts, seven,” and 
so on; accuracy in a washerwoman being as desirable as de- 
spatch in a dentist. Or in that silent and mysterious way she 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


3 


may have been recalling scenes in her past history. If so, 
they were not pleasing scenes. Mrs. Monument’s face, to 
those few who can read the history of a life in a face, showed 
unmistakable signs of trouble ; any one who knew the history of 
that trouble could without difficulty point to individual lines, 
wrinkles, and crows’-feet directly caused at various stages of it ; 
to most of those who were ignorant of this history, and perhaps 
too much occupied by their own misfortunes to think much 
about other people’s, the lines about the mouth, the wrinkles in 
the forehead, the set eyes, and the hardened mouth conveyed no 
more meaning than an inscription in cuneiform. It is, in fact, 
only the novelist, and he only for purposes of his art, who studies 
the human face when it is past the time of beauty, and strives to 
read, with the help of what he knows, the emotions and sorrows 
which have left their mark upon it. It is too often, however, 
like reading a Greek classic with the help of an English crib, 
which has lost the charm of language. 

“ Seventeen years ago, Hester,” said Lady Mildred, “ I was 
taken to see your wedding at the village church, and I thought 
you the most beautiful and the most enviable creature I had ever 
beheld, in your white dress and your curls.” 

Hester played with the soapsuds and smiled. Then she 
frowned at her own foolishness, and then she smiled again. 
Since Lady Mildred was so good as to say she had once looked 
like a beautiful woman, it was not for her to contradict her ; 
henceforth the memory of her wedding-day would possess an- 
other and a brighter association. But Hester, who was truthful 
by nature, had never been accustomed to think of herself as beau- 
tiful. Plain girls sometimes make their own consolations for 
themselves — notably, the comfortable assurance that as many 
plain girls get lovers as pretty girls — but they are never under 
any illusions as to their own looks. Hester, however, permitted 
her mind to dwell for a moment on the memory of her ruddy 
and rosy cheeks and white dress, and on the fashions of tlie year 
1848, and the people in the church, and she smiled again. 

As for the day, it was the brightest and warmest day in June 
ever known; and as for the year, it was in 1866. The house 
was one of a small row of little five-roomed cottages, irregular, 
picturesque, with red-tiled roofs and red-brick chimneys ; they 
have now all been pulled down, not because the landlord was 


4 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


one of those who despise old things and love to tear down and 
destroy, like a first lord of the admiralty with the old ships, but 
because if they had not been pulled down they would have fallen 
down. Wherefore now a terrace of little houses with bow-wim 
dows, built of gray bricks, all exactly alike, and with slate roofs, 
stands in their place, and those who remember the former cot- 
tages fall to weeping when they pass that way. The houses 
stood in a strange and mysterious place, the actual and visible 
marge of London, looking out upon the low green levels wdth 
which Hackney Marsh surrounds the river Lea and prohibits the 
further march of brick. White mists lie over the Marsh in win- 
ter afternoons and autumn evenings, and make it ghostly to look 
upon ; but it is a keen and healthy air which sweeps across the 
plain, a good drying air for linen, and a bracing air for children 
with strong lungs and sound throats. Each of the cottages stood 
behind a long, narrow strip of garden, which was by some laid 
out and planted with onions, cabbages, pease, potatoes, and beans, 
but in more than one case was left fallow, so to speak, dotted 
here and there with patches of turf, and decorated with bare 
masts or poles instead of trees, connected by ropes, with hang- 
ing linen instead of waving foliage and blossom. It w^as, in 
fact, a convenient spot for washerwomen, and Mrs. Monument 
“ did,” single-handed, or with only occasional help, for two or 
three of the first families in Homerton and Hackney, sister sub- 
urbs, which melt imperceptibly into one another, and seem to 
differ in no other respect than that of magnitude. The fruits 
of her labor hung, every fine day and all the year round, upon 
the lines in the garden, and fioated in the breeze, bulbous, spher- 
ical, wafted this way and that, with the undulations and the 
graces of a corpulent fairy, acrpss the flower-beds where no 
flowers ever grew. 

Beyond the garden the eye roamed free and unchecked across 
the Marsh, a bare, flat expanse of green turf, cut into irregular 
shapes by the elevated roads which cross it, deserted in the 
morning, but in summer evenings and on Sunday covered with 
the lusty youth of Hackney Wick ; beyond the Marsh is the 
Cut, up and down which go majestically the barges of the river 
Lea: then more marsh, and then the Lea itself, narrow’ed by 
reason of the Cut, wdth high banks of mud and still tortuous, 
as if resolved to keep its character to the very end. There are 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


5 


two bridges over it — one a narrow footway of wood, rustic, an- 
cient, not without beauty ; the other new and broad, for carts 
and cyclists as well as for those who go afoot. The Marsh is 
not, it must be confessed, one of the most romantically beauti- 
ful spots upon the earth ; but it lies open to all the winds of 
heaven ; those who walk across its causeways may perhaps still 
get ague as they used to do in the brave old days, but at least 
they are outside the houses, which is a very precious thing to 
dwellers in Hackney and its sisters. In the eyes of Mrs. Mon- 
ument the Marsh was chiefly delightful because all the winds 
which blew across it came to her drying-ground fresh and free 
from smut. Can Hyde Park boast as much ? 

The cottage contained a kitchen or laundry, with a red-brick 
floor, looking upon the garden. Here were the washtubs, and a 
boiler and pattens, and a board to stand upon. Behind it was a 
sitting-room, or living-room^ and above were two bedrooms. 
Naturally the steam of the tubs filled the whole house and as- 
cended continually unto the heavens like the smoke of Yesta’s 
sacred fire — none of the Monument children except Polly can 
ever pass the steam of a washtub without being instantly trans- 
ported back to Hackney Marsh and filled with the sense of a 
universal washing-day, as if the rivers and lakes of the whole 
world had been turned into hot and steaming soapsuds. Out- 
side the door was a rustic porch grown over with jasmine, and 
within the porch, at the open door, stood a young lady. In the 
year 1866 she was four-and-twenty years of age, and in the eyes 
of her generation she passed for an extremely beautiful woman ; 
her portrait may be found by the curious adorning any Book of 
Beauty belonging to that time. She wore a huge crinoline, she 
carried her hair in a big net, and, after the fashion of her time, 
she made herself look as short of face and of limb, as dumpy of 
figure, as nature would allow. When one thinks of that time, 
and of the truly sinful waste and throwing away of feminine 
loveliness and grace which went on daily and from year to 
year, it is not pity that one feels so much as blank wonder that 
women could be such fools as to disfigure and transform them- 
selves. 

As regards Lady Mildred Eldridge, one would have felt a very 
human pity, because, in addition to her hideous crinoline, she 
wore widow’s weeds, with a vast quantity of that dolorous crape 


6 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


which every husband who truly loves his wife ought to forbid in 
his will. 

“ And to think, my lady,” said Hester, ‘‘ of your remembering 
me after all these years !” 

“I remember, Hester, how sorry I was when you left the 
nursery to get married. It was the first grief of my life.” 

The woman’s face darkened. 

“ To get married !” she echoed, bitterly. ‘‘ Oh ! what fools 
girls are ! Just to get married ! To leave a pleasant home full 
of kind ladies who’d never throw them over, and run into the 
arms of the first chap who comes along with a smile and prom- 
ise ! If it wasn’t' for the blessed children, I sometimes wish I 
had thrown myself into the cold river the morning of my wed- 
ding. Perhaps it would have been better for them, too.” She 
wrung a handful of linen as if she wished it had been her hus- 
band’s neck. 

“ Hester !” The young widow was frightened at her old 
nurse’s vehemence. “ Hester ! Tell me something about it. 
And why have you taken your maiden name again ?” 

“ I changed my name to get out of my husband’s way ; but it 
was no use.” 

“ Out of his way ?” 

“Yes, my lady. But never mind about my troubles. And 
you with your own to bear, and a widow’s cap and all at your 
age, poor dear !” 

“ I have been married, too,” Lady Mildred replied, calmly, 
“ and I have lost my husband. But about yours, Hester ?” 

“ He is dead,” the woman replied, with an obvious effort, as 
if it pained her so much as to speak of him. “ He is dead, and 
I pray that my children may never hear tell of him !” 

“ I am sorry. Poor Hester !” 

“There are some troubles.” She left the washtub and sat 
down, wrapping her apron about her bare arms. “ There are 
some troubles, my lady, that women needn’t be ashamed of — 
such as men are born to as the sparks fiy upwards — and there’s 
some troubles that we can’t think of, though we must, at times 
— let alone speak of. Troubles that spoil the lives of innocent 
children.” 

“ There are, indeed, Hester. If these were yours I am sorry 
for you.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


1 


“We came up to London,” Mrs. Monument went on, “to get 
work. That’s what he called it. Oh, fine work he got ! He 
was a locksmith, and it’s a trade which finds out a man’s clever- 
ness and leads him into temptations. Whatever his work was, 
there was always plenty of money, and I was happy. Oh, who 
could have told beforehand what was going to happen ? Then 
my Joe was born.” 

“ What did happen, Hester ?” 

“ Nothing, my lady,” she replied, evasively ; “ only that I 
went to live by myself with the baby, and took my maiden 
name, and hoped never to see him again.” 

“ And then ?” 

“ Oh, he found me out. But he is — buried.” There was just 
a slight pause, as if she were not quite certain whether he were 
actually buried or only dead, and still awaiting that rite, like one 
of the melancholy ghosts on the shores of Styx ; though if they 
knew what was waiting for them on the other side they would 
perhaps send up word to their relations not to bury their bodies. 

Everybody has remarked the fondness which all well-regu- 
lated women ehtertain for a good, round, solid aphorism. It 
never loses its freshness for them. Therefore it was natural for 
Lady Mildred to remark, solemnly, “ Where there is no escape 
from evil save by death, it is better that one should die.” 

“ Provided it’s the right one,” said Hester. “ Because, if I’d 
been took, what in the world would ha’ become of the blessed 
children ?” 

“ Where are your children, Hester ? How many of them have 
you ?” 

“ Polly-which-is-Marla,” replied Hester, as if the four words 
made but one name, “ is playing among the linen — bless her ! — 
where she can’t come to no more harm than a slap in the cheek 
from a wet arm or a flapping skirt.” She went out into the sun- 
shine and shaded her eyes with her hand, and called, “ Polly ! 
Polly ! Come to mother !” 

Then there came running out from among the hanging clothes 
a little girl of two years. She was an extraordinarily beautiful 
child, though her frock was ragged and dirty, and the cap tied 
round her head had seen long service. Her short brown curb 
lay over her forehead and pressed out the cap ; her deep, mys- 
terious eyes gazed shyly at the visitor ; her parted lips made the 


8 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


sweetest rosebud of a mouth. Two years old ! This is the age 
when the infant passes into the child ; she is still irresponsible, 
without morals, and void of any principles whatever ; she still 
possesses the infantine wonder ; life is still full of novelty for 
her ; none of the gilding has been rubbed off ; she is always 
making new experiments, and continually breaking out in new 
directions ; she talks a most charming language ; she utters the 
most unexpected sentiments ; and she does the most delightful 
things. She is a flirt, a jilt, a coquette ; she is as unreasonable 
as the wind ; she is as uncertain as the weather ; she is a doll, a 
treasure, a toy, an idol, and a little goddess. Of such there are 
tens of thousands in this land of ours, and I wonder how many 
of us have the grace to thank God for them. 

“ Why, Hester ” — Lady Mildred was startled at this miracle 
of beauty — “ your child is an angel ; she is a fairy. Are all 
your children like this one ?” 

“ Three of them are,” said Hester. “ They take after their 
father, who was as handsome, though undersized, as he was 
clever. Cleverness it was which ruined him, and his good looks 
did him no more good than to make him wicked and false.” 

“ What is her name, Hester ?” 

“ The name, by rights, is Marla, but we call her Polly, be- 
cause the other is an outlandish name.” 

Why did you call her Marla ?” 

“ It was her father’s doing. He would have it, and as I’d 
my choice with Joe and Sam, I had to give way, though I 
blushed for shame when I told the clergyman at the font.” 

“ Marla ! It is an odd name.” 

My man, you see, my lady, was fond of his book, and per- 
haps he found the name in one of the books he was always read- 
ing. But there — it doesn’t matter now ; and I always call her 
Polly, which is handier and more natural.” 

“ Yes — it is handier. Do you know, Hester” — Lady Mildred 
had the child in her arms — “ it is strange ! Do you know that 
the child is strangely like my own little girl ?” 

“ Why, good gracious !” Hester threw up her arms in aston- 
ishment at her own forgetfulness. “ To think that I never even 
asked your ladyship if you had any of your own ! But of course 
you have. There’s the mother in your look, plain to see. Lord ! 
the hunger in a childless woman’s eyes !” 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


9 


“ I have only one — a little girl — about this child’s age.” 

“ None hut a woman with children of her own,” Hester con- 
tinued, “ knows how to carry a baby right. Now, to see your 
ladyship with that little one !” 

“ Where are your other children ? I should like to see them 
all.” 

“ I’ve got four more ” — Hester forgot her work and the beau- 
tiful drying day in her maternal pride — “four more. First 
there’s Joe. He’s sixteen now, and tall for his age. Appren- 
ticed to his father’s trade, and handsome, though not clever, as 
his father was, which gives me hopes for him. It’s the stupid 
lads that turn out the steadiest and do the best. After Joe 
comes Sam, and he’s seven, bless his heart ! For sturdiness and 
appetite there isn’t his equal.” 

“ Nine years between the first and second ?” 

“ Nine years, my lady. Because my husband — ^he deserted 
me, I told you — I came away with little Joe. But he found me 
out after all those years, and came back to me. And then came 
Sam. After Sam came Claude.” 

“ Was that name your choosing, Hester ?” 

“ Lord, no, my lady. I should never have thought of such a 
fine name for my boy. It was his father’s choice. He named 
the boy after some one in his books — Claude something, who, 
my husband said, was one of the greatest men who ever lived. 
But he only seemed to me a rogue and a robber.” 

“ It could not be Claude Duval ?” said Lady Mildred at hazard. 

“ I think that was the name ; but I don’t rightly remember. 
When I took the baby to church I could only remember the first 
name, so he is Claude, and nothing else. He is six now, and a 
beautiful boy — more like his father than me, and as like as two 
peas to Polly-which-is-Marla. After him comes Melenda, who is 
five — another heathenish name. But it’s his choice, not mine. 
She’s like Sam, not Claude. Just after Polly was born my hus- 
band left me again — thank goodness for it.” 

“ Do not let us talk about him, Hester,” said Lady Mildred. 
“ It only vexes you.” 

Just then the children came home from school. First came 
Sam, a sturdy red-haired child with bright eyes, and a face pain- 
fully like his mother’s — chiselled hastily and with just a few 
strokes, rough but effective ; the result being a broad forehead, 
1 ^ 


10 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


strong chin, large mouth, and rosy cheeks. After him walked 
Claude — a pretty boy of six, who had very much the air of a 
gentleman in disguise, though his clothes were tolerably ragged. 
Last there came a little red-haired girl of fire, exactly like her 
brother Sam. They emerged from the white curtains of drying 
linen and stood ranged in line before the porch. 

“ Here they are, my lady,” said their mother, proudly review- 
ing her family. “ This is Melenda, who’s as good as gold al- 
ready, and can be trusted with Polly. This is Sam. Hold up 
your head, Sam. It would do your ladyship good to hear that 
boy read. And this is Claude. He’s like his brother Joe and 
his sister Polly. They all favor their father — in outward looks 
only, I hope and pray.” 

Lady Mildred remarked how she kept recurring to her hus- 
band, whose memory she so much detested. It was as if he were 
always in her mind. 

“ Hester,” she said, “ do you alone provide for all these chil- 
dren ? Is there nobody to help you ?” 

“ Nobody,” she replied. “ It’s terrible hard work, to be sure ; 
and sometimes I wake in the night and think I must break down. 
An d then we shall aU have to go to the Union — ^you can see it 
from the back of the house — and me and them will be parted.” 

“ Five mouths to be fed ! It must take a great deal of wash- 
ing to find food for so many.” 

“ Yes, my lady. But there, I don’t mind hard work. There’s 
worse trouble than that for me to be afraid of — worse than hun- 
ger even for the little ones — ^that I dread day and night,” 

“ Hester,” said Lady Mildred, who still had the youngest in 
her arms, “ let me help you. Let me take one of the children 
off your hands. Lend me this little one.” 

“ Lend you my Polly ?” 

“ Lend her to me, Hester. You can trust her to me. I am 
not a stranger to you. Let me take the child,” 

The mother snatched the little girl out of her visitor’s arms. 

“ Part with my flesh and blood !” she cried, jealously. “ Give 
you my Polly !” 

“ If you think it would be for her good.” 

The woman hugged the child aud pressed it closer to her 
heart, and shook her head. But the tears came into her eyes. 

« There is something on ycur mind, Hester,” Lady Mildred 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


11 


persisted. “ No ; do not think that I want to know what it is. 
There is something you remember and something you dread. 
When you speak of your dead husband you look about you as 
if you feared he might be standing at your garden gate. Poor 
Hester ! You must have had an unhappy life.” 

“ An unhappy life — yes.” 

“ He is dead and past our blame of it,” said Lady Mildred. 
“Yet something survives. The memory — ” 

“ The memory of it,” Hester repeated — “ the shame of it, for 
me and for the children.” 

“ If you let me have the child, I will bring her up in ignorance. 
She shall have no knowledge of the memory.” 

“ Do you want to make her my young lady’s maid ?” 

“No. She shall be brought up with my daughter — her com- 
panion ; she shall be educated with her. I will provide for her. 
As for separation from you” — Lady Mildred remembered that 
if she were to bring up the child as a young lady, Sam and Me- 
lenda and Claude might not, in the course of time, be quite de- 
sirable companions — “ as for separation, you shall know always 
how she is going on ; when she grows up you shall see her again 
if you wish it; she shall be told about her parentage nothing 
more than you please to tell her. Think ! You will part from 
the child, but it will be for her happiness, and one less to work 
for.” 

“ Oh, my Polly !” cried the mother. “ As if I could think it 
a trouble to work for your dear little mouth !” 

“ Think of it, Hester. Take a week, a month, to consider.” 

To Lady Mildred’s astonishment Hester decided on the 
spot. 

“ You shall have her, my lady. Oh, to save them from what 
I dread day and night, I would part with them all. Take her — 
take her. To save her I would consent never to meet her again 
till we meet in heaven. Yet — oh, let me keep her just one night 
— my pretty darling ! — to hold her in my arms one night longer.” 

“ Oh, Hester !” said Lady Mildred, moved to tears. “ I will 
be like a mother to her. She shall never be unhappy if I can 
help it. And as for you and yours, whatever happens, you will 
have a friend in me and mine.” 

“ Oh, I know — I know. But promise me one thing, my lady. 
Let the child never learn, whatever happens, unless I tell her — 


12 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


only my boy Joe knows — that my name is only my maiden name ; 
else she’ll want to know her father’s name. If when she grows 
np she asks about her mother, tell her that her mother was an 
honest woman. If she asks about her father, say that he is dead 
and buried long ago. There are five of them. One of them 
knows the secret already, but he keeps it close ; perhaps the 
three left with me will find it out, but not Polly — not little 
Polly-which-is-Marla. God knows I’d never part with her — 
never — except for that one thing, so long as I’d a finger left to 
work with.” 

“ She shall be happy,” said Lady Mildred, “ if I can make her 
happy. And you shall see her again. Somehow you shall see 
her. You shall not altogether lose her.” 

In this way little Polly-which-is-Marla disappeared from Hack- 
ney Marsh, and became Valentine or Violet, I know not which 
— adopted daughter of Lady Mildred Eldridge, and therefore 
granddaughter of the Earl of Haslemere, Knight of the Garter, 
and daughter of the late Sir Lancelot Eldridge, Bart., M.P., 
F.S.A. This was certainly very great promotion, and, if one 
may say so of a young lady of this tender age, as yet wholly 
undeserved. 

Have I done well, Bertha ?” asked Lady Mildred, over the 
two cribs in which, side by side, the two children were sleeping. 
Lady Mildred was a woman with many ideas, and Miss Bertha 
Colquhoun was the friend of her girlhood to whom she com- 
municated them. 

“ They are curiously alike,” said Bertha ; “ one might almost 
take them for twin sisters. As for your doing a wise thing, my 
dear Mildred, Time, the only infallible prophet, will disclose 
when the hour comes. I shall not give my decision till I hear 
his opinion. As for your doing an interesting thing, that is un- 
doubted. Tell me, by the way, which is little Trix ? I haven’t 
seen her since she was in long clothes ; and which is the little 
washerwoman of Hackney Marsh ?” 

“ Why, nobody knows except myself and my solicitor. I was 
obliged to tell him. I have changed nurses, and managed so 
carefully that nobody can so much as guess. The child with 
the light blue ribbon round its neck is Valentine ; the other is 
Violet. For both of them and for all the world Beatrice is lost, 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


13 


as well as Polly, until October 15, 1885, when Beatrice will come 
of age.” 

“ Oh !” said Bertha, disappointed at not being taken into the 
secret ; “ then I must wait like all the world, I suppose. But, 
oh, my dear ! Poor little Polly-which-is-Marla ! Poor child, 
when she learns the truth !” 


PART 11. 

THE STROKE OF FATE. 

For eight years longer those strong arms worked without rest 
or pause over the wash-tub. Time, who possesses an apparently 
double movement, like a planet, and goes round and about among 
us while we go straight on, frequently remarked the unchange- 
able character of this good woman’s life, for whom none of his 
seasons produced either joy or pain, except so far as they brought 
good or bad drying days. The lines were always up, except in 
rainy weather, and they were always laden, for eight years, dur- 
ing which Mrs. Monument never flagged and never felt weary. 
In eight years Joe passed from a ’prentice to a workman ; at the 
age of nineteen, like most of his fellows, he took a wife, herself 
seventeen ; by the age of twenty-four he had five children. In 
eight years Sam advanced from seven to fifteen and became a 
pupil-teacher, being resolved to achieve the position of board 
schoolmaster. Claude was thirteen, Melenda was eleven, and 
Polly, of whom from time to time the mother heard the best 
accounts, was, with her sister Valentine or Violet, ten years of 
age. 

Now, after eight years. Fate suddenly interposed, acting in 
that decisive manner by which she has always commanded so 
much respect, and even fear. It is, in fact, the Oriental style, 
in which there is no hearing of a case, or pleading, or argument, 
or jury, or evidence, or court of appeal, or anything at all but the 
caliph, the successor to the Prophet — may his soul have peace ! 
— who knows everything, and orders everything, and lo ! it is 
done, whether it be the lopping of a head, or the extermination 
of a family, or the elevation of a beggar in rags to a purple robe 
and a seat on a white ass and the post of grand vizier. In this 

B 


14 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


case, as usual, the decree of Fate was final and irresistible. Mrs. 
Monument began to go blind. Firsts she became conscious of a 
carious dimness of vision whereby the outlines of things were 
blurred ; next she found that this dimness grew upon her ; and 
finally, after the most dreadful apprehensions for the future, she 
sat down and folded her hands, and made Sam write a letter to 
Lady Mildred. She had now gone so blind that she could no 
longer see anything but “men like trees walking;” she would 
very soon cease to see them at all ; then she would get to the 
end of her money ; then, what would happen to the children ? 

When Lady Mildred came, in response to this letter, she was 
received, so to speak, by a boy who sat in the porch reading. As 
for the garden, it looked forlorn without the linen ; the posts 
were there, and the lines, but there was no linen, though a most 
beautiful drying breeze was blowing over the Marsh from the 
northeast, and there was a warm sun in the sky. Stranger still, 
there was no smell of steam or soapsuds in the house, and the 
stricken worker sat in the inner room, hands crossed, in the pa- 
tient expectant attitude of the blind. 

The boy rose and pulled off his hat. Lady Mildred by this 
time had quite forgotten the child who, at five years of age, had 
the air and appearance of the descendant of fifty dukes. His 
face, however, had altered little ; it was now a sharp and rather 
thin face, marked with a strange refinement and delicacy of out- 
line. We do not generally associate such a face with a laundry. 
We are wrong, of course ; because in every city court, and on 
every village green, and wherever humans do congregate, there 
will always be found some child or children with the face of 
refinement and sweetness, not in the least like the rough and 
plain faces round them. A scientific person, I believe, would 
call them “ sports,” playfully implying that Nature must have 
her little distractions, and cannot abide forever to be trammelled 
with law and rule. Perhaps, however, the scientific person would 
be wrong, and there may be nothing in man which is not heredi- 
tary, down to the cut of a nostril, the outline of a cheek, or the 
curve of a lip. If Claude’s ancestors in the male line were 
known, for instance, we might trace every feature the boy pos- 
sessed to some grandfather or great-grandmother. As for his 
mother’s family, it is very well known indeed, and it is a most 
ancient and a highly honorable house, seeing that every man in it 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


15 


from father to son has, from time immemorial, worn the smoct 
frock or leather jerkin, driven the plough, fed the pigs, sowed 
and reaped, and sowed again, and has presently shut his eyes 
and been laid under a little mound of grass in the acre of the 
Lord. And as for distinction, why the sons of this house fought 
at Senlac, where they got defeated, after unheard-of bravery, and 
at Cressy and Agincourt and Bosworth Field, and at Blenheim, 
and at Waterloo and Alma. Claude has every reason to be proud 
of his ancestors by his mother’s side. But he did not get his 
face from any of them, because their faces, though scrupulously 
honest and sometimes clean, were never either refined or delicate. 

“ Please, ma’am, my name is Claude,” said the boy, conscious 
that his name was much finer than Sam’s ; and, indeed, it is a 
very beautiful name, and many a city knight has to put up with 
one much inferior. 

“ Claude — yes — I remember you now.” Lady Mildred re- 
membered the story of his baptism. Was he really named after 
Claude Duval ? “ Let me look at you, boy ! You are like your 

sister — Polly. Does your mother tell you about Polly-which-is- 
Marla ?” 

“ Oh, yes. A fine lady came and took Polly away. Some day 
we are to see her again, when she comes home for good. She 
won’t be proud, mother says.” 

Then Lady Mildred left him and went to see her old nurse. 
She observed, however, that the boy sat down again and buried 
his face in his book. “ You poor soul !” she said. “ Tell me all 
about yourself, and why didn’t you send for me before ? And 
what does the doctor say ?” 

Presently, after the first outpourings concerning the darkened 
eyes — “ And now,” said Lady Mildred, “ about your children. Is 
Joe doing well ? And has he turned out quite as stupid as you 
hoped?” 

“Joe’s a good workman, and he’s in good work at Tottenham 
with a plumber and house decorator. He would marry at nine- 
teen, like all the rest of them, and now there’s five innocent ba- 
bies, and she two years younger than himself. But he’s a good 
son always, though he can’t help no one but himself.” 

• “And Sam?” 

“He’s studying for pupil - teacher, and gets on wonderful. 
There never was a boy like Sam for getting on. He’s made up 


16 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


his mind to rise in the world, and rise he will. Says he shall be 
master of a board school before he’s satisfied. Think of that 
for my Sam !” 

“ Good boy ! And then comes Claude — the little fellow out- 
side in the porch.” 

The mother shook her head. 

“ I don’t know what will come to the boy, nor what trade he 
will take to. For he thinks about nothing but books and read- 
ing. Sam reads, too, but then Sam only reads what he wants, 
and what will be useful to him. Claude reads everything. Oh, 
dear, dear ! his father was just the same. Always forever with 
a book in his hand.” 

“ Boys who read,” said Lady Mildred, “ often come to great 
honor. And what about Melenda ?” 

“ She’s at school yet. But she gives me a deal of trouble, my 
lady. I want to get her into good service, in a lady’s house. 
But she won’t go. She says all the girls at school are going to 
be free and independent, and earn their own living by them- 
selves, and so will she. What do they know about it? Give 
me a good dinner every day, I tell her. That’s the first thing. 
But the girls nowadays are all for freedom, even if they starve 
with it. There, my lady, that’s enough about the children. Tell 
me how my Polly grows, and if she’s a good girl, and pretty 
behaved.” 

It certainly was a very good thing for the Monument family 
that it found a friend in Lady Mildred at this juncture, when, if 
it had not been for her, the subsequent history of the family 
would have belonged to the simple annals of the workhouse. As 
it was, the sympathy of Lady Mildred proved of a very practical 
kind. First it procured for Mrs. Monument a cottage in an alms- 
house in the Tottenham Road, where she was near her eldest son 
Joe, and substantial help besides, so that she would be looked 
after and “ done ” for ; and as for Sam, it provided for that boy 
— though he never knew the fact — the means of continuing his 
course of study, and enabled him first to become a monitor with 
five shillings a week, and next a pupil-teacher with sixteen shil- 
lings a week, and then to go to a training college, and finally to 
get a place as assistant teacher on ninety pounds a year with a 
five-pound rise. And as for Melenda, it kept her at school and 
found her in food and clothes until she refused to stay any more. 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


17 


And as for Claude, I suppose the boy’s pretty, delicate face and 
intelligent eyes bad something to do with Lady Mildred’s kind- 
ness to him ; but she always said it was because she found 
him a natural lover of learning and devourer of hooks. At all 
events, she called him one day and held a very serious conversa- 
tion with him. 

First she asked him what he would like to be. 

“ I should like,” the boy replied, reddening, “ to go into a 
bookseller’s shop. There’s one in the Victoria Park Road, full 
of old books, where they want a boy.” 

“ You would not be allowed to read the books. You would only 
sweep out the shop, put up the shutters, and run on errands.” 

The boy’s face fell. To sit among books seemed to him the 
height of happiness. But to sit among books and not be allowed 
to read them, that would be a fate worse than that of Tantalus. 

“ You should desire to get on, Claude. The love of reading 
may help you if you have the other qualities for success. Have 
you thought of anything else ?” 

No ; he had no other ambitions. 

“ Now listen. Boys who read and are industrious sometimes 
get on very well. I fear it may be too late for you to do much, 
but you can try if you are brave.” 

What was he to try ? Claude looked at her with great eyes 
of wonder. “ I will give you a good education. I will take you 
away from this place and have you taught as much as you can 
learn. You shall be educated up to your capacity, whatever that 
may be.” Claude felt himself, as to capacity, like unto the Great 
Tun of Heidelberg. His color came and went ; his heart beat, 
and he choked. What was this great happiness that was com- 
ing to him ? “ When I learn that you have gone far enough, we 

will consider what you can do for your living. And remember,” 
— she lifted an admonitory finger — “ never pretend to be what 
you are not. You are the son of a working-man and a working- 
woman, though you will wear good broadcloth and go to school 
with boys who may pretend to look down upon you.” Claude 
wondered what she meant. ‘‘ As for your mother, you will go to 
see her whenever you can, and you will not neglect your brothers 
and your sister. Your future will depend entirely upon your in- 
dustry and upon your ability. I think you will show ability, at 
least. If you do, remember that every avenue to success is open 


18 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


to you. That you will not understand at first. Say it to your- 
self until you do understand it. Say it when you read of any 
great man. Never forget it. Though you are a poor lad, you 
may hope for everything and dare everything. But you must 
not be afraid to work and to wait ; you must not be afraid of 
fighting or of speaking out. Above all things, work. Do you 
understand, Claude ?” 

The boy’s heart glowed within him. But he could not answer. 
His tongue refused to move. He was frightened as well as daz- 
zled at the prospect before him. 

“ Will you do your best, Claude ?” Lady Mildred asked, in a 
kinder voice. 

“ Oh ! yes, yes,” said Claude, bursting into tears. 

“ Your best, my boy. Your hardest and your best. You will 
either see me or hear from me often. I shall always know ex- 
actly what you are doing and how you are getting on. Oh ! 
child, you are too young, yet, and too ignorant, to know what a 
magnificent chance you are going to have. I pray that you may 
not throw it away. If you do, the mud into which you fall will 
be Malebolge itself compared with the mud out of which you 
have been taken.” 

The boy understood little of these words except the great fact 
that he was going to learn unheard-of things ; that he was no 
longer to wander on the Hackney Marsh, dreaming, but he was 
to work, something as his brother Sam was working, but with 
other aims, and, as he vaguely understood, with wider aims. He 
was to work, to fight, to wait, and to hope. In course of time 
success would be his. I do not know what were his ideas of suc- 
cess. A boy cannot frame or map out for himself a career ; but 
he can feel that something is to be tried for and something won, 
and he can imagine for himself some of the glorious sensations 
of victory. Besides, the boy who accustoms himself to think of 
the world as something to be conquered, and of himself as a sol- 
dier of the future, has already won half the battle. For him 
there will be no false modesty. When the time comes, he will 
step into the front rank as one whose place is there, and that by 
divine right itself. 


BOOK I. 


CHAPTER I. 

AT NINE o’clock. 

There are many delightful and desirable rooms in London; 
the pilgrim who is in society is continually halting on his way to 
rest and refresh in these Houses Beautiful. But there can be 
no more pleasant place than that room in Lady Mildred’s town- 
house which the girls had made their own. It was on the ground 
floor ; two windows looked through the foliage of lime, laburnum, 
and lilac, upon the Park, though with the road between ; it had 
at one end a glass door opening upon a conservatory ; it was al- 
ways filled with the fragrance of flowers ; and here the girls kept 
their own things — their very own — which they prized the most. 
Valentine had here her favorite piano, with her songs and mu- 
sic ; the walls were hung with Violet’s pictures, and there were 
portfolios filled with her sketches ; there were cabinets full of 
treasures collected in their wanderings — things pretty, things 
ugly, things quaint, things precious, things worthless — memo- 
ries of Egypt, Greece, Italy, and France and Germany — wherever 
the English girl is allowed to wander. It is not yet, but very 
soon it will become, the fashion for her to visit the States and 
Canada, the isles of the Pacific, Australia, India, and far Cathay. 
Therefore the young ladies had nothing from these countries. 

About seven o’clock on an evening early in July of the year 
1885 the two girls were sitting together in this room, as was not 
uncommon with them. But it was their wont to be quiet, calm, 
and restful, as behooves young ladies who believe that life is al- 
ways to be a long-continued and monotonous happiness in the, 
midst of pretty things and soft cushions. On this occasion, how- 
ever, they were greatly agitated. One of them, Valentine, was 
standing; the other, Violet, was sitting at the table. In her 


20 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


hand she held a pencil, and she was rapidly drawing figures on 
a sheet of paper. 

They were about the same age, and that a youthful age ; they 
were dressed exactly alike — they always dressed exactly alike — 
and for the evening. If a masculine pen may be permitted to 
indicate the outlines of their dress, leaving details to be filled up 
by the imagination of experience, they wore a dainty confec- 
tion of pale-blue silk called, I think, surat, which fell in long folds 
from the waist, and was caught up at one side, showing a lace pet- 
ticoat, which is a pretty old fashion come back again. The throat 
was a little open, but not much, with folds of lace about it, and 
there was an arrangement of ribbons and loops about the waist. 
They were dressed well, in fact, yet with the appearance of sim- 
plicity. Their hair was of the light-brown hue which is so much 
beloved by the English youth. Violet’s was full of curls and 
curves and twists, which caught the light and scattered it about 
as a little waterfall in a mountain brook breaks and scatters the 
sunshine. Valentine’s hair was slightly darker in shade, not 
curly, but with a wave in it, and in her hair the sunshine lay and 
rested. They dressed their hair in the same fashion, and that 
not a common fashion ; for it was parted at the side instead of 
in the middle — or as hairdressers, ignorant of Euclid, say, in 
the centre ; it is a pretty fashion if there is a pretty face for the 
hair to encircle, otherwise the commoner methods are preferable. 
Their eyes were blue in color, but not quite the same shade of 
blue ; for Valentine’s were certainly darker than Violet’s, and, 
like the hair, they absorbed the light which Violet’s received and 
reflected : in other words, they were deeper and graver eyes. I 
would not for a moment suggest that they were more beautiful ; 
that is matter for the jealousy of a lover, and nowhere are com- 
parisons more odious than those concerning beauty. Argument 
on such a subject is purely vexatious and barren, and wastes the 
time which should be spent in thankful hymns for the precious 
gift of loveliness. Always those eyes are the most beautiful 
which belong to the woman one loves at any moment ; and, until 
he meets his fate, a well-regulated young man should always be 
in love with somebody. The girls’ faces were of the oval type, 
but, which is a most important distinction, of the shorter oval. 
The longer oval, in fact, is apt to degenerate into narrowness, 
with perhaps the expression of a bird of prey ; while the shorter 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


21 


form allows of strength to the chin and breadth to the forehead 
and amplitude to the cheek. Venus should have an ample cheek 
as well as a smiling mouth and kindly, gracious eyes. There 
may be less capacity for philosophy, hut there is more for mathe- 
matics, music, and the finer feelings in the shorter than in the 
longer oval. A prolonged residence at Newnham would be nec- 
essary in order to carry on this delightful investigation to its 
legitimate end. And one need not here discuss questions on 
which even novelists, who are the only true philosophers of mod- 
ern times, and ought to be the only statesmen, might disagree ; 
besides, these girls were neither philosophers nor mathematicians. 
They were only girls who had been carefully educated at home, 
and knew a great many accomplishments and arts, had curiously 
pretty customs and pleasing manners, and practised, without 
knowing it, the most charming graces. But they knew no 
political economy, and they were not brought up to consider 
themselves bound to consider or to solve any social questions 
at all. 

The girls were about the same height — that is to say, they 
were fairly tall ; their carriage and bearing were alike ; they 
looked like sisters, and were taken by strangers for twin sisters. 
There were, however, certain marked differences between them, 
not immediately apparent, which the stranger presently observed. 
Thus, Valentine was somewhat larger in person than Violet ; and 
as to their voices, Valentine’s was rich and full, Violet’s was low 
and sweet. And as to their tastes, Valentine was a musician 
and a singer, while her sister painted with no mean skill, and 
drew, if not quite so well as Mr. Du Maurier, yet well enough to 
delight her friends and to please herself. Yet, which is a very 
curious thing and only to be accounted for by the fact that 
everybody knew they were not really sisters, it w^as universally 
agreed by all their friends that no one could possibly mistake 
them for sisters. One of them — there never was any conceal- 
ment of this fact — was the only child of the late Sir Lancelot 
Eldridge, baronet and member for the county, who would proba- 
bly have got into the cabinet had his party returned to power 
in time. But they did not, and he was cut off at sixty-five, 
which is, for a statesman, early manhood, almost the first fiush 
of spring promise. He left a quite young widow. Lady Mildred, 
daughter of the Earl of Haslemere, to take care of his infant 


22 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


daughter. The other girl — there was never any concealment of 
this fact either — was nothing in the world but the daughter of 
a mechanical person of the baser sort, a mere working-man. She 
had been adopted by Lady Mildred, no one knew ^hy, and was 
brought up with her own child. Her true name, though this 
was not generally known, was Marla, and she had been formerly 
known in her own rank of life as Polly, for short. One of them, 
therefore, was a very considerable heiress, and most desirable in 
point of family connections ; the other had nothing at all, and 
her connections were presumably most undesirable. 

“No one will maintain,” said the World, “that the daughter 
of a working-man and the daughter of a gentleman can ever stand 
upon the same level. Education can refine, but it cannot change 
base metal into gold.” 

Yes. Unfortunately there was a complication. No one, not 
even the girls themselves, knew which of the two was the heiress 
and which the simple working-man’s daughter. 

“ This,” said the World, “ is wicked. Lady Mildred will not 
speak and no one knows, and there are hundreds of men only 
waiting to know which is which. Is it right to ignore natural 
distinctions ? Not to know ; and it ought to be such a simple 
thing ; and yet it is not possible to tell, and it disturbs all one’s 
ideas. Why, the Eldridges have always been remarkable for the 
beauty of their girls. But these girls are both beautiful. And 
of course one ought to read old descent in a face. But here 
both the faces might show long descent. What man would dare 
to face so terrible an uncertainty ? Why he might be marrying 
into the most dreadful family possible. Was it right, could it 
be right, of Lady Mildred to take a girl out of the gutter and 
pretend that she is a lady ?” 

There was once a nymph of surpassing loveliness who offered 
every one of her suitors a double acrostic, with an alternative ; 
either they guessed it quite correctly without the aid of any dic- 
tionary, or if they failed in any one of the lights — it was a fright- 
fully hard acrostic, which wanted both dictionary and encyclo- 
paedia and a complete acquaintance with the whole field of classi- 
cal literature — that suitor was instantly decapitated, and so made 
way for another. If, on the other hand, he succeeded, this mur- 
derous young person bestowed upon him her blood-stained hand. 
In point of fact, though history passes it over, only one young 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


23 


man ever offered himself. He was the Prize Acrostic Giiesser — 
the champion. They gave him the thing, in neat hendecasyllab- 
ics, and while he was reading it they proceeded to erect the 
scaffold. But in the confusion and excitement which always 
attends a coming execution he meanly ran away. In the end 
this princess died unmarried. There was also another young 
lady, strong and staying as to wind and limb, who offered to 
run races with her suitors, on the same terms of death or victory. 
But Love’s Nemesis came upon her too, for no one ever pro- 
posed to run with her on those terms, and she presently grew 
middle-aged and fat, and lamented the days of her beauty and 
her arrogance, and said that running races was unladylike and 
ought to have been discouraged long since, and it was wrong of 
her parents to encourage her. But it was too late, and now she 
leadeth apes by a chain. Lady Mildred presented herself and 
her two girls before society when they were twenty years of 
age, with a conundrum bearing much the same consequences. 

She said, in fact, to the whole of the English youth, “Young 
gentlemen, here are two charming girls. They are natural, fresh, 
and innocent. I have kept them in the country for twenty 
years, so that they are healthy both in body and in mind. They 
are as pretty as most girls; they are accomplished; they are 
frank and they are good-natured ; they are amiable, they are 
even clever. One is my daughter and the other is not ; one is 
an heiress and the other is not. Fall in love, therefore, if you 
dare. Offer your hands if you dare. You may win a fortune 
or draw a blank. You may be grandson-in-law to an earl and 
son-in-law to a baronet, or you may find yourself surrounded by 
a troop of cousins with paper caps, aprons, bags of tools, sew- 
ing-machines, and with manners which generally accompany 
those emblems of toil. Is love worth such a risk ?” 

Apparently it is not in this cold and calculating age. The 
girls had gone through their first season, and not one man as 
yet had ventured. This did not disturb them in the least, for 
they were ignorant of Lady Mildred’s conundrum, and their 
thoughts were not bent on matrimony. 

There was not wanting plenty of curiosity. There are always 
inquisitive persons whose imaginations are fired with every mys- 
tery, and can never rest until they know all about it. Some of 
these tried questioning Lady Mildred, and were coldly snubbed ; 


24 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


some even tried the girls, who froze directly the subject was 
mentioned. But they learned experience, and presently grew 
wary and recognized the regulation smile of sympathy and the 
little laugh of apology with which the mystery was always ap- 
proached. Some examined the various extant portraits of Sir 
Lancelot — that at eight years of age, that at twenty, that at for- 
ty, and that at sixty — and then furtively compared them with 
the two girls and sucked thereout no profit to themselves, but 
only more uncertainty; and others gazed upon Lady Mildred 
and watched her gestures, her carriage, her little distinctive man- 
nerisms, if she haply had any, and then watched the girls, look- 
ing for some little trait in one of them — a turn of the head, a 
momentary emotion of the face, which might reveal the secret. 
There were hundreds of these indications. Unfortunately they 
were as remarkable in one of the girls as in the other. A 
mother, again, is generally found to show more tenderness tow- 
ards her own child than to another, but Lady Mildred was ten- 
derness itself towards both the girls ; not the least difference 
could be observed in her manner towards either. Then there 
is the voice ; but here specialists — that is to say, those who re- 
membered Sir Lancelot — differed, because there were some who 
recognized in Valentine and some in Violet the tones of the 
late baronet’s voice exactly reproduced. 

And now the world was waiting. In three months Lady Mil- 
dred’s daughter would be of age ; perhaps the other one as 
well; but nobody cared about that. It would be impossible 
then to conceal the thing any longer. The heiress must receive 
her inheritance ; the truth would be known ; the parentage of 
the workman’s daughter stand revealed ; and the young men 
could come forward. 

“ Val,” said one of the girls impatiently, “I really do believe 
that the evening of this day will never come.” 

“It is much longer than the very longest day of all the year, 
Violet; my dear, a longer day was never created,” Valentine re- 
plied. “ He belongs to both of us, absolutely and impartially, 
does he not ?” 

“ That is agreed,” Violet replied, gravely. “ He is our 
brother — brother to both of us.” 

“If we are to be proud of him,” Valentine went on, “we are 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


25 


to be proud together. He is our own property — the property 
of both. If we are to be ashamed of him, we will be ashamed 
together.” 

“Ashamed of him,” Violet repeated. “ I suppose he will be 
like this.” She had sketched a workman with a bag of tools 
in his hand, and a paper cap and an apron — a good-looking 
young workman. “ This is the best chance for us, Yal dear. 
But yet I don’t see even in this case that we can be reasonably 
proud of him, can we ?” 

“ Well,” said Valentine, examining the sketch, “ you have 
made him look respectable. Labor has its dignity. Can’t we 
be proud of an intelligent working-man ?” 

“ Or he may be like this.” She took up another sketch show- 
ing the conventional JElf and ’Arry out for a holiday, arm in 
arm, roaring and shouting — they are really very rare, these two, 
though they certainly can be found. “ Or like this she showed 
a young fellow leaning in drunken pose against a lamp-post; 
“ Or — ” here she showed a dreadful, smug young man with fat 
cheeks and curly whiskers, a frock coat and baggy trousers, and 
a smile — one of those young men who read scientific books, live 
on temperance principles, and are virtuous — all with ostentation. 

“ Don’t, Violet,” said her sister. “ Oh, I am sure we shall 
not be ashamed of him. Mamma would not have asked him to 
come here if he were like this — or this. But possibly he is a 
working-man — what else can he be ? We are only the daughter 
of one !” 

“ Perhaps,” said Violet, “ he may know which of us is his 
sister by some likeness to his father or his mother or himself.” 

“ Or perhaps he may remember us. We were only two when 
we were taken from our — other mother ; and he is three or four 
years older ; he may remember his little sister.” 

“ No : not after twenty years. But there may be a something 
— a family squint — but our eyes are straight; some people have 
hereditary teeth which stick out — but ours don’t f or thick lips 
— but ours are not thick ; or great ears which stick up — but 
yours are small and lie flat, and so do mine. Oh ! there must 
be something, if it is only a disposition to drink.” 

“ And then there would be no secret to tell us on the fifteenth 
of October. If there is anything, Vi, let us keep it to our- 
selves.” 

2 


26 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ I know what I should like to say.” Violet sprang to her 
feet. “ I should like to say : Brother — this is Miss Beatrice 
Eldridge — I am your sister. My name is Polly — Polly-which- 
is-Marla.” For they had heard so much of the family his- 
tory. 

“And I,” said Valentine, “should tell him that you are quite 
mistaken, because I have always been convinced in my own mind 
that I am Polly.” 

“ There are moments,” said Violet, reflectively, “ wlien I feel 
unheard-of possible depths.” 

“ And there are times,” said Valentine, “ when I feel incon- 
ceivable basenesses.” 

“ Of course, the lower classes do feel depths.” 

“ Of course, my unworthy thoughts are my inheritance.” 

“ Then both of us,” said Violet, “ must call him brother.” 

“ And he must call us both sister.” 

“The two together only make one sister. Then I suppose 
we must let him call us by our Christian name. Fancy a car- 
penter in an apron addressing you as Valentine ! Oh ! I shall 
box his ears.” 

“Violet” — Valentine dropped her voice and blushed at the 
thought of the thing. “ Brothers — kiss their sisters. It will be 
dreadful if — ” 

“No,” said Violet, firmly. “Certainly not. No carpenter 
shall ever kiss me.” 

“ Sooner or later we shall learn the truth. Till then,” said 
Valentine, “the question must not even be raised. Besides, if 
one hasn’t seen one’s brother for twenty years, one cannot very 
well be expected to — oh ! Violet, everybody knows the story of 
the beggar who became a princess, but nobody knows the story 
of the princess who became a beggar, and put on rags and wanv 
dered about with poor people. Do you think she was ever hap> 
py, dear ?” 

“ No,” said Violet, shuddering, “ she was always miserable, 
and she died young, and of a broken heart.” 

“ I don’t know. Perhaps she was a great joy to the poor 
people, and was able to do all kinds of things for them. I think 
I could put on the rags, Violet dear.” 

“ You never shall. You in rags !” Violet shuddered again. 
“ But they might be picturesque. You shall put them on, Val, 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


27 


dear, and sit to me in them, and I will paint you so, and send 
the picture, if they will have it, to the Grosvenor.” 

“ Bertha, stay here this evening. I want you to assist at a 
family function which is to take place at nine o’clock.” 

This was in another room — Lady Mildred’s drawing-room— 
and there were present Lady Mildred herself and Miss Bertha 
Colquhoun, her old friend. Twenty years had passed over their 
heads. The former had never married again — the latter had 
never married at all ; as regards the ravages of time. Lady Mil- 
dred was no longer young, but she was still comely, and Bertha 
was of like age, but less comely, because widows wear better 
than spinsters. It would be unkind to say more. 

“ What is it, Mildred ?” 

“ I am going, this evening, at length, to make the girls ac- 
quainted with their — ” 

“ At last ! Oh, Mildred — and you have asked me to learn the 
truth with them. It is kind of you.” 

“ Acquainted with — their brother.” 

“ Oh ! But — pardon me, Mildred — is that necessary ? Their 
brother must be, I suppose, quite a common man. Is it well to 
pain the poor girls with such kinds of associations ? I thought 
they — she — had been quite separated from the family.” 

“ You shall answer the questions for yourself at nine o’clock, 
Bertha. Meantime, remember that it wants little more than 
three months to the time when my child must learn the truth, 
because she will attain her twenty-first birthday.” 

“ But why not wait to tell them ?” 

“ Both girls know the story of Polly, but to-day they heard 
for the first time that there is a brother, and that they are to 
meet him this evening.” 

“ Poor girls !” 

“ They are now preparing themselves, I believe, for the re- 
ception of a working-man.” 

“ Poor dear girls !” 

“ And they are encouraging each other to receive him kind- 
ly. Before the truth is known to them, you see, they will have 
time to become fully acquainted with the whole of the other 
family.” 

“ Poor Polly ! Oh ! Mildred, how could you !” 


28 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Why do you pity Polly ? She is as well bred as Beatrice : 
she is as beautiful. I shall not unmake the gentle breeding, 
though I take away the gentle birth.” 

“ Still — poor Polly ! Will she take her own name ?” 

“ I do not see the necessity. She may just as well remain 
Valentine — or Violet Eldridge.” 

“ I suppose the brother will come here straight from the pub- 
lic house, pipe and all ?” 

“ Perhaps.” 

“ No doubt he will. Poor girls ! It is dreadful for them. 
After all these years of culture — of course, for one it will be 
only a little excitement which will pass in three or four months, 
and she will be able to reflect that she knew all along that she 
was Beatrice. But as for the other — I repeat, Mildred, poor 
Polly ! However, you have forgotten one thing.” 

“ What is that ?” 

“ AVhy, in introducing their brother you will betray the secret, 
because the girls will find out tlie truth — everybody will find* it 
out — from his likeness to one of them. So I shall be the first 
to learn the secret after all.” 

The four ladies dined together, but it was a silent banquet. 
The girls, for their part, said nothing at all, but looked at each 
other and at the clock. At half-past eight they adjourned to 
the drawing-room. The brother was to be introduced at nine. 
The girls, as the clock drew nearer to the hour, clasped each 
other by the hand, while Lady Mildred and Bertha fell into si- 
lence or only exchanged a word at intervals. And oh ! how 
slowly moved the minutes ! 

At nine in the evenings of early July it is not dark, but only 
a little overshadowed, and there is quite light enough to discern 
faces, which is all that is necessary for conversation. You may 
talk in the dark, but, as Charles Lamb once remarked, it is in- 
convenient having to feel your companion’s face for the re- 
sponsive smile. As the clock struck the hour the door was 
thrown open. 

“ Mr. Claude Monument !” 

The girls caught at each other and gasped. Lady Mildred 
rose. In the door stood a young man who looked about him 
with troubled eyes. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


29 


Good heavens !” Bertha murmured, hut I think everybody 
heard her. “ The creature is a gentleman !” 

Yes. He had on the outward garb of a gentleman, and he 
carried himself with the outward bearing of a gentleman. It 
was a rude thing for Bertha to say, but her mind w'as full of 
working-men and pipes and aprons, and the smell of beer, and 
she was surprised into rudeness, and she hoped that nobody 
would notice it. Now, there certainly was never yet in any his- 
tory or in any country a carpenter, or a smith, or a working-man 
of any kind who ever had a dress coat to put on unless it was 
to go out as a waiter in the evening. Could the young man be 
a waiter ? 

“ My children,” said Lady Mildred, taking the young man by 
the arm, “ here is your brother ; Claude, this is your sister, 
Valentine and Violet.” 

“ Good heavens !” cried Bertha for the second time, as she 
pressed forward and peered curiously into his face. “ Why, the 
man is just like both of them f’ 


CHAPTER H. 

WHICH IS MY SISTER? 

Lady Mildred touched 'Bertha on the arm, and they left the 
three together. 

“ W^hich of you,” asked Claude, looking from one to the 
other, “ which of you is my sister ?” 

The girls held each a hand and gazed into his face with won- 
dering eyes, which met eyes of equal wonder. Neither of them 
answered, but all those wondering eyes softened and became 
humid. Is it a small thing, think you, for two girls to be un- 
expectedly presented with a grown-up brother? And that 
brother so desirable in outward looks ? Is it a small thing for 
a young man, especially a young man who has been lifted from 
the lower to the higher levels, to be presented with a sister who 
has been similarly transplanted, and to outward seeming has 
proved equal to the change ? To be sure he had already a sis- 
ter, but she was Melenda; and two brothers, but one was Joe 
and one was Sam. 

C 


30 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Claude saw before him two girls, beautiful exceedingly and 
strangely alike each other ; Nature, as we have already heard, 
having been so good as to lend a most generous assistance to 
Lady Mildred. He thought of Melenda. Good heavens ! if 
one of these was his own sister, and the other Lady Mildred’s 
daughter — and the features of both in the soft summer twilight 
had the same delicacy, their eyes the same purity, their lips the 
same sweetness — how could one of these girls be his own sis- 
ter, and the sister of Melenda ? The girls, for their part, saw a 
young man with straight and regular features, broad forehead, 
resolute lips, and steady, serious eyes — a young man somewhat 
slight in figure, but well shaped and of grave expression — and 
they were overwhelmed. This was their brother, like one of 
themselves they thought, the child of a London working-man. 
By what arts had he been transformed into a gentleman ? 

“ "Which of you,” he repeated, “ is my sister ?” 

“ We do not know, Claude,” said Violet, thinking guiltily of 
her sketches. 

He turned to the other girl. 

“ We do not know,” Valentine repeated. 

“You do not know ? Lady Mildred told me yesterday that 
she would give me a sister.” 

“ We do not know,” said Violet, for the third time ; “ we 
thought that perhaps you would recognize your sister, or might 
know her by some likeness to — your father, for instance.” 

“ I do not remember my father. He has been dead a great 
many years. I have forgotten my sister entirely, and I was 
never told that Lady Mildred had taken her.” 

“ Claude,” said Valentine, “ we must both be your sisters.” 

“ I will tell you,” said Violet, “ Polly’s history brought down 
to this very day. Listen. She was found by Lady Mildred 
nineteen years ago, and was taken from her playground, which 
was also the drying yard, for her mother was a washerwoman. 
I never see linen hanging out to dry without thinking of that 
day. She was playing hide-and-seek all by herself among the 
wet sheets, no doubt catching a dreadful cold, when she was 
found and carried away. She was a pretty child, and curiously 
like little Beatrice. Well, she was educated with Beatrice, and 
no difference at all was made between them, and they were 
called Valentine and Violet, but they knew all along that one 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


81 


was Beatrice and the other was Polly. They had the same mas- 
ters, they learned the same things, and had the same friends. And 
now we are grown up and have come out, and people when they 
don’t know the story — but they are very few — think us sisters, 
and say there is no doubt about our descent from the illustrious 
house of Eldridge. It would be for some girls awkward to ex- 
plain, but we are used to it, and now point out without any con- 
fusion that one of us is Beatrice Eldridge and the other is Polly 
— what is the name, Claude ? I did not quite catch your name, 
which we have never been told.” 

“ Monument.” 

“ Monument.” Violet considered the name for a moment. 
“ Monument. It might have been worse. Monument. Fancy 
being a Monument ! Little Trix has grown into tall Beatrice — 
we are both exactly the same height. Little Polly has also 
grown into big Polly, which is short for Marla, her real name — 
we know that part of the family history, too.” Claude thought 
that he could perceive the least possible vein of bitterness under 
this bright talk, but then he was naturally sensitive about his 
reception. “ Don’t forget, Claude,” she added, “ that we think 
quite as much about Beatrice as about Polly. Do we not, 
Val?” 

. “ Quite as much,” replied Valentine, gravely; “we must not 
be ashamed of Beatrice because she has not the same pictu- 
resqueness of birth as her sister. Please, Claude, get into the 
habit of remembering that Violet is really Beatrice, and that I 
am your very own sister. I am sure of it. Why, I actually re- 
member playing about among the clothes. I think — but I am 
not quite sure — that I remember the cold I caught.” 

“ She is quite wrong, Claude,” Violet interposed. “ When I 
shut my eyes I can really see the wet sheets, and if you want 
any further proof you will very soon find yourself looking to 
Valentine for everything which requires the instinctive impulse 
of generosity.” 

“Oh! Violet!” 

“ Is it possible ? You do not know ?” he repeated. 

“ We do not know,” they assured him together, and for the 
fourth time. 

“ Then what are we to do ?” 

The girls looked at each other and shook their heads. What 


32 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


were they to do ? The situation was embarrassing, hut it was 
what they expected. 

“ We had made up our minds before you came what we were 
going to do. You will have to treat us as if we were both your 
sisters, until you find out which of us it is, and after that we 
will consider the, position again. But,” said Violet, clasping 
her hands, “ oh ! the joy and comfort of having a brother so 
promising as you ! My dearest Val, think how very, very few 
brotherless girls like you and me ever get such a chance as a 
full-grown brother given to them, and a brother too— who — 
looks,” she spoke quite slowly and with a sigh of relief between 
each word, “ who — looks — as — if — we — should — actually — be 
proud of him.” 

Claude blushed, but it was growing too late to see that linger- 
ing note of youth. 

“ You might have come home from a desert island, Claude, 
after you had been wrecked and been given up for lost for 
nineteen years. But then there would have been a sweetheart 
waiting for you — they always have a sweet — oh ! but perhaps 
there is — ” 

“ No,” said Claude, laughing, “ there is not.” 

“ I am very glad, because we shall have you all to ourselves. 
You might have been brought to us when you were a schoolboy, 
and then you would have tortured and plagued us. You might 
have been kept back for another ten years, and then we should 
have been old women. Oh ! it is much better as it is. You 
will try to like us, won’t you ?” 

“ Will you try to like me,” Claude replied, “ and not expect 
too much of me ?” 

“ You will tell us presently ” — it was always Violet who con- 
tinued to talk. She was a little fiushed, and her eyes were 
brighter than usual — “You will tell us presently,” she said, 
“ how it is that you have become a — a gentleman.” Then, as 
if fearing that she might have given pain, she added, “ Be- 
cause sons of working-men do not often look and speak like 
you.” 

“ I will tell you presently,” he replied. “ Did you think I 
should come straight from a workshop ?” 

“This is what Violet drew,” said Valentine, showing him 
the sketches ; “ we pictured the very worst, you see.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


33 


“ I see,” said Claude, laughing. “ But the sketches are de- 
lightful. May I take them? Thank you. Well, then, let us 
sit down, and I will tell you all about it.” 

So they sat down, and he, like ^neas, began his moving tale, 
and they, like two twin Didos, listened. When he mentioned the 
trade of his father and the calling of his mother, Violet begged 
him earnestly not to speak of those things if they were painful 
to him. He declared, however, and it seemed strange to her, 
that it was not in the least painful to him to think that his 
mother had been a washerwoman. To think of one’s own 
mother earning her bread at a wash-tub ! 

Claude carried on his narration into his schooldays, where he 
fought his way to the front and won scholarships and prizes. 

“ I know now,” he said, “ why Lady Mildred came to see me 
and why she fired me with ambition. Once she took me to the 
theatre, and between the acts asked me if I would rather he one 
of the actors on the stage or the author of the piece or one of 
the gentlemen in the stalls, because if I wished I could become 
any one of them. And once she took me into the Park in her 
carriage and showed me the great people, and asked me if 1 
wished to be one of them, because I could if I wished. And 
again she took me to a court of justice, and asked me if I 
would like to be the counsel pleading in the case, or the judge 
who heard it, because it depended wholly on myself. And then 
to a church where there was a bishop preaching, and she asked 
me if I would like to be a bishop. Always as if the highest 
was within my reach if I chose. So that I never felt as if the 
accident of obscure birth was going to be an obstacle in my 
way. And, indeed, it has not been any hinderance, so far.” 

“ That was like her,” said Valentine, “ to fill you with noble 
ambitions.” 

“ And, besides, my mother was no longer a laundress, and I 
came, no doubt through Lady Mildred’s promptings, to think of 
her courage and steadfast love and the whole life that she gave 
freely to her children.” 

“ Yes, Claude,” said Violet, meekly. 

“ It was through Lady Mildred that I learned to love the hard 
work which was to be my ladder. I owe everything — every- 
thing — to her. And now I owe a sister.” He offered, with a 
little shyness, a hand to each. 

2 * 


34 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ And what are you now, Claude ?” 

“ I am a barrister of the Inner Temple, newly called, and as 
Vet without a brief or a client ; but they will come.” 

“ He is a barrister, Yal — oh !” 

“ And I am a Fellow of Trinity.” 

“ Oh ! Violet, he is actually a Fellow of Trinity !” They 
clasped hands of admiration and of joy. Could they have 
hoped or dreamed of such a thing. 

“ Now you know all. I am something of a scholar and a 
good deal of a student. And I have enormous ambitions, of 
which I will tell you another time if I may.” 

“ Tell us everything,” said Valentine ; “ do not have any half- 
confidences with us. Tell us all about yourself. It is some- 
thing only to know what a man’s ambitions are. Remember 
we have some right to your confidences. We are your sisters, 
Claude.” 

“ You shall have all my confidences. But do not expect too 
much of me. Do not be disappointed in me. As far as I have 
gone, it is certainly true that no one could have done much more 
than I have done. I am Fahri Filius, son of a smith, so entered 
in the college books. The university is open to all the world, 
but of course everybody understands that if the son of a work- 
ing-man enters, he should justify his admission.” 

“ You have already justified yours, then,” said Valentine. 
“ Oh ! Claude, we are proud of you.” 

“ But how am I to justify my admission ?” asked Violet. 
“Because I am also Fahri Filia — that is good Latin — the 
daughter of the smith ? Don’t shake your head at me, Valen- 
tine, dear, or I will call you Beatrice at once and for good. 
You see, Claude, Val and I have double the number of ances- 
tors. For instance, we have four grandfathers instead of two. 
Two of them used to wear straw round their legs and smock 
frocks, and they said all day, ‘ Gee — who ! a !’ The dear old 
men ! And as for the other two, one tied a beautiful blue gar- 
ter round his leg, and had a gold collar to hang round his neck, 
and on grand occasions he put a gold coronet on his head ; and 
the other was a baronet, and lived in a great house, and voted 
solidly with the Conservatives. This wealth of grandfathers 
naturally makes us proud. But you have no share in two of 
them, poor boy !” 


CHILi>.’^N OF GIBBON. 


35 


Claude laughed. 

“ I have tried to persuade myself,” he said, “ that it mates 
no difference a’t all what a man’s birth may have been. But of 
course I don’t quite believe it. I am always measuring my own 
stature with that of my friends, and asking myself if I stand on 
their level as regards — what constitutes a gentleman. If I do 
not, forgive me and help me.” 

“ But you do,” said Valentine ; “ of course you do.” 

“ Any man may make himself a scholar and a Fellow of Trin- 
ity, and even a great barrister, but I am not certain whether any 
man may make himself a gentleman. Do you think that after 
any kind of intellectual success, even the highest, a man may 
ever be able to say to himself, ‘ I am a gentleman at last ; I 
have the instincts as well as the training of a gentleman ?’ ” 

“ You have them already,” said Valentine, -confidently ; “ one 
can see them in your face.” 

“ The family name is Monument,” said Violet, quietly. 

“ Quite so,” Claude replied ; “ and the name is associated 
with memories. Did not Lady Mildred tell you anything about 
your family ?” 

“ Nothing except my father was a smith and that my own 
name is Marla or Polly.” 

“ Now tell us,” said Valentine, “ about the family. Have we 
any other relations besides yourself, Claude.” 

“ My dear,” said Violet, “ should we inquire further than is 
necessary ? There must be cousins by hundreds. But go on, 
Claude.” 

“ First, there is my mother.” 

“ Oh !” both cried out. Then their other mother was living. 

“ She is blind, and has ceased to work for many years. She 
is now in an almshouse.” 

“ Claude, you cannot suffer her to stay there.” 

“ She is happier there. Lady Mildred made me promise to 
let her stay. Do not be ashamed of the almshouse.” 

“ Poor mother !” said Valentine ; “ blind and in an almshouse.” 

“ One would much rather have heard,” said Violet, “ that she 
was the widow of a retired officer and living nicely in a villa at 
South-sea. But if she is happy — go on, Claude. Is our fa- 
ther living — in another almshouse ?” 

“ No ; he is dead,” said Claude, gravely. “ We ought to be 


86 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


proud of my father. He was clever in his trade ; he was sober 
and industrious ; he was honest and respected : what more can 
one ask of one’s father ? Joe remembers him well. It is from 
Joe that I have heard about my father. He was but a working- 
man, but I am proud of him.” 

We will be proud of him, too,” said Valentine, though as 
yet she saw little room for pride in a father who only possessed 
the very simple virtues of honesty, industry, and skill. You 
perceive that she was deplorably ignorant of the world, where 
we are constantly brought to a standstill and provoked into 
wrath just by the lack of these very simple qualities. 

“ Did Polly,’* Violet continued, “ have any other brothers and 
sisters? She hopes on the whole that she did not, because it is 
impossible they could all be so nice as you, Claude.” 

“ She had two other brothers and one sister. First, there is 
Joe.” 

“ My brother Joe. It sounds oddly at first. Joe — Joseph — 
Joe. I think Joseph — no, Joe — is better. We will call him 
Joe, Val. He is no doubt a working-man.” 

“ He is the eldest and is a locksmith, as his father was before 
him. He is now six-and-thirty years of age, though he looks 
older.” 

“ Is he — does he — go about with that red handkerchief round 
his throat that we were talking of ?” 

“ Joe is a smith ” — Claude evaded the question — “ and he 
works for a builder and decorator. Of course he looks like 
what he is — a working-man.” 

“Things are being brought home to us, Val,” said Violet. 
“ Go on, Claude.” 

“ He is a good-natured man and he has ten children.” 

“ Ten children ? They are our nephews and nieces. The 
world,” said Violet, “ is growing wider.” 

“ He married, like most working-men, at nineteen. There is 
one good point about Joe — he is careful of his mother, whom 
he never forgets.” 

“ And after Joe ?” 

“ Then there is Sam, ten years younger. He is the master of 
a board school, and is unmarried. He is clever, and has read 
and has ideas. In fact he has too many ideas, and he holds 
them perhaps too strongly.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


37 


Do you see much of your brothers, Claude ?” 

“ No, very little. They think I have no part or lot with them 
any longer, and Sam resents my trying to turn myself into a 
gentleman. Perhaps it was absurd to try. He is unfortunately 
prejudiced against all the people who wear good clothes and 
have white hands.” 

“ Is Sam like you to look at ?” 

“ No, not in the least. Sam has red hair and is short. He 
is remarkable to look at, however, because he is always in ear- 
nest, and he looks strong.” 

“ I think I shall like Sam,” said Valentine, thoughtfully. 
“ He seems more interesting than Joe. Every man ought to he 
brave and strong.” 

“ Sam is very interesting,” said Claude. “ Especially when 
he is in a rage.” 

“ Are there any more ?” 

“There is only Melenda. She is a seamstress, and she lives 
with two or three girls who do the same kind of work. She is 
free and independent, she will receive no advice and will endure 
no restraint, and she regards me with contempt because I am 
not a workman. At present I do not exactly know where she 
is living, because she has ordered me never to see her again. 
But I can find her out.” 

“You must find her out,” said Valentine. 

“ In the matter of cousins now ?” said Violet, with resigna- 
tion. 

“ I dare say there are hundreds of cousins, but I do not know 
of any. The working people of London do not, as a rule, keep 
up cousinships. A family dropped down into this great city 
very easily gets scattered and dispersed.” 

“ Perhaps it is as well,” said Violet. “ Claude, do not de- 
spise me. We knew something of all this before, of course, 
but only in general terms, and thus have become romantic. The 
plain facts are overwhelming at first. I feel shivery. It is most 
delightful to have a brother who is a gentleman and has distin- 
guished himself. But — ” 

“Our other family,” said Valentine, “seemed always so far 
away. And now they have suddenly become so near.” 

Then there was silence while a man might count twenty. 

“ They are not really nearer to you than they were before,” 


38 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


said Claude. “You Lave not been taken to see them. You 
need not seek them out.” 

“ Claude I” said «V alentine, reproachfully. 

“ You tell us we have another mother living, and you say we 
need not go to see her,” said Violet. 

“ Our own mother — the only one we know,” Valentine went 
on, “has brought you to us. She means by your means to 
make us known to all our unknown relations. Claude, five or 
six years ago she wrote us a letter — it was addressed to us 
both, but it was meant for Polly. ‘ Close beside us,’ she said, 
‘ unknown to us, are those who toil their lives away while we 
live at ease : they waste and expend themselves in drudgery, 
while we cultivate both mind and soul. Do not forget that 
one of you belongs to them in a sense which the other does 
not. If, hereafter, you go among them, remember the old ties, 
and be full of love and compassion for them, for they are 
your brothers and sisters. Your brother’s sin is your disgrace : 
your sister’s shame is yours.’ Violet, you remember that 
letter ?” 

“ As if I could ever forget it,” she replied, gravely. 

“You see, Claude,” Valentine explained, “the feeling that 
we are not really sisters has made us more than sisters. One of 
us is a girl — oh ! so humble and so poor — and the other is so 
rich and so well-born. And by this knowledge we are drawn 
together more closely than if we had been children of the same 
parents. Always, and all day long, we have Polly with us — 
Polly-which-is-Marla.” 

“ Always with us,” said Violet. 

“ She goes with us wherever we go ; we look in each other’s 
eyes and see, reflected there, her image : the shade of Polly is 
always with us; she has grown up with us; she has been al- 
ways like us in face and height; but when we try to picture 
her as she would have been if she had been left among her 
friends — then, Claude, Violet and I cannot agree.” 

“ I know very well what she would have been,” said Violet. 
“I have seen her in the street. She would have a great lump 
of hair upon her forehead, and she would wear a gray ulster 
or 'Si red crossover ; she would laugh very loud and she would 
walk three abreast — ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Valentine, “ Polly would be dressed like other 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


39 


workgirls, I suppose, but she would be a gentle creature, full of 
sweet and generous thoughts.” 

“Who would have put them in her mind?” asked Violet. 
“ Do sweet thoughts grow in girls’ working-rooms ? Claude, 
what do you think ? Could Polly be in the least like Valentine ?” 

It was nearly twelve when Claude left them. They had been 
sitting without lights at the open window looking across upon 
the Park. The room was full of moonlight strong enough to 
suppress the lamp before the house as the electric light puts out 
the yellow light of gas ; their hearts glowed within them ; the 
eyes of the girls were soft with sympathy and newly born love ; 
the young man’s pulse beat faster and his cheek burned, as he 
took their hands. 

“ Claude,” said Valentine, “ tell us — always — everything.” 

“ He will,” said Violet. “ He trusts us already. Oh, Claude, 
you have made us so happy.” 

When he was gone, the two girls fell into each other’s arms. 

“ Val,” said one. “ He is my very own — my brother to my- 
self. But you may love him too.” 

“ Oh, Violet,” said the other. “ That poor blind woman in 
the almshouse, who worked so hard. She is, I am sure she is, 
my mother.” 


CHAPTER HI. 

JACK CONYERS. 

Some among us — not all — have been young. They will re- 
member how, in one or two supreme moments, they have been 
carried out of themselves with a joy which can never be felt in 
its fulness after five-and-twenty — the intoxicating, dazzling joy 
in the prospect of lifelong happiness. 

It falls upon one, perhaps, when love has been whispered and 
returned ; perhaps, when the first success has been achieved ; 
more often when some kindly prophet has foretold to trembling 
youth the success which his heart desireth. That prophet shall 
be regarded ever after with love and gratitude, and a respect un- 
speakable for his gifts of discernment. Why are there so few 
of them ? There ought to be a school of these prophets, their 


40 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


sole duty to prophesy, for every deserving youth, good-fortune, 
distinction, contentment, joy, and wealth, with an eternity of 
happiness hereafter in the Elysian Fields. Everybody feels ca- 
pable of deserving, and of perpetually enjoying all these rewards 
and more. 

There never was, in the whole history of mankind, such an 
occasion for rejoicing as that presented to Claude. It was the 
greatest thing that had ever happened to him : greater than the 
first scholarship ; greater than his place in the Tripos ; greater 
than his fellowship ; greater than his ambition. 

Consider ; it is a youthful instinct to impart confidence and 
to expect sympathy : boys, students, undergraduates, young men 
of every sort, in obedience to this instinct, confide greatly in 
each other. After examinations passed, degrees obtained, and 
the college walls exchanged for the wide world, which always 
turns out to be a coldish kind of place, young men grow less 
sympathetic with each other and more reticent about themselves ; 
they exercise selection in their confidences ; they even abstain al- 
together from talking about their personal ambitions, just as, about 
the same time, they cease to speak of poetry, religion, and other 
things which I suppose they consider too sacred for common 
speech. Every man makes in his heart an Adytum of the Tem- 
ple which grows more full as he grows older. Only the priest 
is by law allowed to enter into this holy of holies, but he gen- 
erally takes with him a companion, who is always of the other 
sex — his sister, sweetheart, or wife. The sympathy of sisters, 
indeed, is always ready to be had for the asking, and perhaps, 
on that account, like everything else easily attained, is less valued 
than it should be. Many young men, however, prefer the sym- 
pathy of other people’s sisters, and this also is, to do these young 
ladies justice, ready as a rule when properly asked for. 

Alone among his fellows, Claude had no home circle which 
could understand him and could follow his career with inter- 
est. Every day since that on which he first left them seemed 
to separate him more and more from his own people. He had 
long since left off telling them what he was doing, because they 
could not understand it. His mother knew nothing about 
Cambridge, and had never heard of Trinity, though the fame of 
every individual fellow of that college, as all the resident fel- 
lows know very well, is trumpeted abroad, with mighty blast, 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


41 


from pole to pole, and fills the round world with wonder and 
admiration ; he knew few people ; it was two years since he 
had taken his degree, and his old school and college friends 
were already scattered ; among all the millions of women, old 
and young, which inhabit London and England, there was not 
one whom he could call either friend or mistress ; not one to 
whom he could open his heart. 

He was used to this isolation : it was a necessary part of his 
position ; at school, when other boys got prizes, their mothers 
and sisters and all their people were present to congratulate 
them ; when he went up to receive his prizes there was not a 
single person in the room whose eyes softened and whose heart 
glowed at the sight of his triumph. When he was head boy 
and carried off no end of prizes, the other boys cheered and 
some of the spectators remarked audibly upon his singular 
beauty — for he was a comely lad — and he went home to his 
boarding-house with a cartload of books and an aching heart 
because of his loneliness. Even Joe, brother Joe, the plumber’s 
man, in his working dress, would have been something. At 
Trinity he wmn an entrance scholarship and afterwards a uni- 
versity scholarship and a city company’s scholarship, and with 
these helps paid his own college expenses easily, and there was 
no one to say, “ Well done !” not even Lady Mildred, who con- 
tented herself with an expression of satisfaction, and when he 
concluded his student course with a fellowship, reminded him in 
the days of his first pride, and just as if anybody who chose 
could be a Fellow of Trinity, that this was nothing more than 
the first step. Young men,, she added, may show promise by 
taking university distinctions, but they are by themselves of lit- 
tle importance* Claude must take care not to think that anything 
real had been achieved. Not one single person in the world to 
whom he could open his heart. 

And now he had a sister — two sisters — one rolled out into 
two — both as beautiful as the day and as sweet as the roses in 
June, and they were proud^of him. For the first time in his 
life he realized how well he had already done, since he could 
make two such girls proud of him ; and he wondered how he 
c6uld possibly have done it, alone, and without a single word of 
congratulation and encouragement on the lonely hard road he 
had travelled. 


42 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


He stalked along the crowded pavement seeing no one, his 
head full of these thoughts, his chin in the air. A hand was 
laid on his shoulder. 

Claude pulled himself together and took the other hand, which 
was held out. 

“ You in London, Jack?” 

“ Yes. I am in London. I have been here for two or three 
weeks. Come to my chambers — they are close by — and let us talk.” 

Claude was not inclined to talk about anything except per- 
haps about Valentine and Violet, but he followed his friend. 

“ Where have you been for the last two years ?” 

“ I have been travelling — studying — sketching. One must 

travel, you know.” 

The chambers were furnished after the modern fashion : there 
were cabinets with china ; there were water colors ; there was 
glass ; there were skins and rugs ; they were clearly rooms be- 
longing to a man of taste. 

The name of Jack goes with almost any kind of character: 
it suits a soldier or a statesman, a poet or a mechanician, a 
prince or a pauper, a hero or a humbug. It requires only one 
quality — that its possessor must be accepted on his own terms 
by his contemporaries : not that he must necessarily be popular, 
but he must he believed in. When Jack Conyers, in his first 
term, announced himself as one of the coming men, the lads 
about him accepted him on trust. He was the coming man — 
his manners rather than his words or his acts proved it. He 
had, to justify these pretensions, a good name and a good pres- 
ence to begin with ; he did nothing actively to encourage or to 
justify the belief, except perhaps that he understood the power 
of silence ; he did not chatter, as many young men do, but 
when he spoke it was slowly and quietly, as if what he had to 
say was worth hearing; nor was he like so many young men 
carried away by any enthusiasms of the hour, and he was always 
critical. Also, he did not laugh much, though he understood and 
practised the fine and subtle art of smiling, an art in which wom- 
en generally excel ; but Jack Conyers excelled all women. It was 
not exactly known who and what were his people, but it was 
understood that he was of good family ; he had the appearance 
and manner of one who has money ; he did not court intimacies ; 
he dressed well, and he seemed to know London. Reading for 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


43 


the Senate House was, he said, narrowing to the mind which 
desires culture more than scholarship; therefore he took an 
ordinary degree ; he had a piano in his rooms, and played and 
sang a little ; he also painted and sketched a good deal, and it 
was supposed that his career, of which he spoke continually, 
though vaguely, was to he connected in some way with art. 

In appearance he was of the middle height and thin. He 
wore a pince-nez : his features were regular and delicate ; his 
eyes were good, though rather hard, as if always on guard ; his 
mouth was well formed, but the lips were too full, and his fore- 
head was high and narrow. Not an effeminate-looking man, 
but evidently one who desired to appear refined, and studied 
attitude as well as dress, and his surroundings as well as his 
manners. If he had been asked what he most desired to convey 
in his appearance he would have confessed — if he did confess — 
that he wished to look like a young man who was going to suc- 
ceed. Claude was one of the men of his own standing who be- 
lieved in him. Some there were, I regret to say, who scoffed at 
the name of Conyers. 

The room was lit by a shaded lamp. Upon the mantelshelf 
there stood three small portraits side by side. They were oil 
sketches, and represented three girls’ faces, all evidently painted 
by the same hand. 

You are looking at those heads,” said Jack Conyers. “ They 
are portraits, such as they are, of three women” — he sighed — 
“ three women — poor things ! — who were so good as to complete 
my education.” 

“ How did they do that?” 

“ By letting me fall in love with them. A man, I have dis- 
covered, cannot be a finished artist without a full personal ex- 
perience of passion. How can he express what he has never 
felt ? Yet, for an artist, love should be a memory rather than 
a living thing, and therefore each experience should be short. 
This was a French girl, vivacious, full of espieglerie ; this was 
an Italian, the mere creature of passion ; this a Roumanian. 
Woman, as mistress or as wife, in the boudoir or the salon^ 
should form part of every career.” 

Pelham or the great d’Orsay could have said no more. Claude, 
however, asked no more (questions about the portraits, though 
doubtless there was a whole chapter belonging to each. 


44 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ And what are you going to do ?” 

“ I have taken a studio and I am going to begin my 
work.” 

It seemed rather a drop for the vagueness of coming great- 
ness to take the concrete and even common form of a studio. 

“ As for my success — ” 

“ Of course you will succeed,” said Claude. 

“ I do not know. The common success — the adulation of the 
crowd — does not attract me. I shall never stoop to paint half 
a dozen pictures in a year. Perhaps one in four or five, or even 
ten years. The picture which I have in my mind has been 
growing for at least five years, during which I have filled my 
soul with it. The subject has been part of myself. Claude ” — 
he raised his finger impressively — “it will be, I am assured, a 
great picture ; there will be in it, at least, the whole soul of the 
artist.” 

Claude murmured indistinctly something to the effect that a 
picture with a soul in it would be indeed worthy of his friend’s 
reputation. 

“ Hitherto the picture, as it exists in my mind, has been in- 
complete for want of one face. But I have found it at last. I 
discovered it in a people’s concert where I was made to sing by 
Lady Aldeburgh — a concert somewhere near a place they call 
Shoreditch ; after the concert I talked to the girl who owns the 
face, which is as yet sadly incomplete ; she is ignorant, but ap- 
parently open to emotions. I shall get that girl. I shall take 
her away from her belongings and cultivate her face. Every- 
thing shall be sacrificed to the cultivation of the face. She 
wants to be well fed and kept in soft silk and made dainty with 
fancy dresses and idleness and pretty things, and then that face 
will grow and develop like a rosebud. At present, I admit, it 
is imperfect, but it is a possibility, and it will make my picture. 
The eyes are there, already, and they are full of possible poetry 
and passion.” 

He spoke with something nearly approaching enthusiasm. 

“ Can’t you paint her without wanting to take her from her 
people ?” 

“ Ho, I want her taken away altogether from the place where 
she lives. She must be placed wholly under artistic influence — 
she must be mine — my model — the slave of art.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


46 


“ Wouldn’t it be better, perhaps, for the girl’s reputation for 
her to stay where she is ?” 

“ Philistine ! I want her in the interests of art. She is needed. 
One can’t stop to think about the reputation of a girl in compari- 
son with — ” 

“Don’t Jack. My own relations, you know, are somewhere 
about those levels, and they have reputations which they seem 
to value even more than the interests of art.” 

Jack hastened to change the subject. When you touch on 
the reputation of a man’s possible sisters you tread on danger- 
ous ground. 

- “ I saw you coming out of Lady Mildred Eldridge’s, but you 
walked so fast that I could not overtake you for ever so long. 
She is a friend of yours ?” 

“ Yes, my best friend.*’ 

“I met them in Florence last winter. I was able to be of 
some little service to them — one of the girls sketches cleverly. 
They are both, in fact, pleasing.” 

“ Thank you,” said Claude, with a conscious blush ; “ one of 
them is my sister.” 

“ What ?” Jack Conyers started in his chair and dropped his 
cigarette. “What? One of them your sister?” He knew, 
like all the world, the history of the two girls in general terms, 
how one was an heiress and the other the daughter of a working- 
man. “ One of them your sister ? My dear fellow, they are 
])oth — allow me to say it — both most beautiful and accom- 
plished young ladies. You are a lucky man, and I congratulate 
you. Which of them is it ?” 

“ I do not know which. My sister was adopted by Lady 
Mildred nineteen years ago, and the secret has been kept ever 
since.” 

“ But you will find out. This is not the kind of thing which 
is kept hidden. There must be some points of resemblance ; 
your father, for instance — ” 

“ He is dead, and my mother is blind.” 

“ At all events you are sure to find out before long.” 

“ I dare say I shall, or else I shall be told.” 

“ It is rather like the end of a Latin comedy.” 

“Yet it is only the beginning of an English comedy. You 
know my history, Conyers. Everybody does. When men meet 

D 


40 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


me for tlie first time they whisper to each other, ‘ Son of a work- 
ing-man, you know.’ I do not hear the words, but I read them 
in their eyes. That is nothing. But I have been rather a lone- 
ly man — ” 

“ Naturally,” said Conyers, trying to look as if he entirely 
sympathized with him, “naturally.” But he was thinking 
which of the two girls more nearly resembled his friend. 

“ And I can hardly try to make you understand what a tre- 
mendous thing it is to have a sister at last — a sister who takes 
an interest and — and — even a pride in one.” 

“Well,” said Jack, “for my own part I never wanted any 
brothers and sisters. They divide the money and they give all 
kinds of trouble. But from your point of view no doubt you 
are right. It must he a bore not to have any belongings.” 

Claude laughed and prepared to go. 

“ I have belongings, to he sure, but not of the kind which you 
would understand.” 

“ That is very conceivable, and I am very sorry for you. I 
find any other class than our own impossible to talk with 
and uninteresting to study. Well, I am very glad we met to- 
night, my dear boy. Come often — come as often as you can, 
and tell me when you have found your sister. Let me share 
your secret. Valentine or Violet — I knew that they were as- 
sumed names. Tell me when you have found out which of 
them it is.” 

“ Certainly I will. Good-night.” 

Jack Conyers, left alone, prepared for himself and drank a 
lemon squash. Then he sat down and meditated with a mixture 
of gloom and hope in his countenance. When a young man 
leaves the university at two-and-twenty, resolved upon distinc- 
tion and yet uncertain which path to choose — when he wanders 
about for two years purposeless — when he returns determined 
upon a career in art, as painters arrogantly call their profession, 
as if a novelist or a poet is not also an artist — when, further, he 
remembers that art is not always lucrative — that one may have 
to wait long before making a name, and that meanwhile no money 
is coming in — when, lastly, there will arise at midnight spectres 
of doubt which point the finger and say, “ Yah ! you will never 
succeed, even by a trick ” — when, at the same time, one has con- 
ceived a way, a trick, by which to take the town by storm and 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


41 


has actually found the face with which to do it — there is room 
for the play of a good deal of mixed emotion. 

Presently he saw a letter lying on his table. He took it up 
and looked at the handwriting and tore it open. 

“ My dear Jack,” — he read it quickly as if to get through it and 
have done with it — “ you have been back three weeks and you 
have not been to see me. Very well. Sooner or later I sup- 
pose you will come. I can wait, my dear boy. I know very 
well why you said you loved me, and I know all about your 
money matters. Go on. Within six months you will hang up 
your hat in my hall and be happy ever after. I shall have the 
money, but you shall have full liberty and a handsome allow- 
ance. I am not in the least jealous, because I am always cer- 
tain of the person whom alone you love — go look at him in the 
glass. When you have found out that you cannot get on with- 
out me you will repent of your negligence and come. When 
we settle down we will give dinners, and you shall play at being 
a distinguished man and I at being the appreciative and devoted 
wife, and we shall suit each other very well. I saw your sisters 
the other day. If I were you I would sometimes call upon 
them. Good-night, my Jack. Your affectionate Alicia.” 

Jack read this letter through. Then he burned it, because 
every word was true, and truth is best hidden in a well or be- 
hind the bars of the fireplace. 

“ If I could find out somehow, through Claude, which of them 
it is,” he thought, “ and I could do this without his knowing, I 
should have such a chance as might make me free of Alicia yet. 
She always had the most disgustingly coarse way of putting 
things, and she’s getting coarser every day.” 

Jack’s Cambridge bed-maker, who loves reminiscences almost 
as much as an old statesman, maintains that Mr. Conyers, though 
a liberal gentleman, and one who kept a deal of company, was of 
the sort which thinks of nobody but theirselves. Bed-makers 
have great experience of young men, and their opinions should 
be received with weight. 


48 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON, 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE HAVEN OF REST. 

I SHOULD like to sing a song of almshouses — not so much of 
those great havens of rest with their spacious courts and old 
chapels and broad gardens which are scattered about this realm 
of England, as of the London almshouses. They vary from the 
poor little half-dozen cottages in a row — like Lady Game’s, 
which are so small that the residents are elected by competitive 
measurement, character not being so much an object as small- 
ness of stature — the new and stately palaces such as those at 
Wood Green, or the old and dignified college such as that be- 
yond Greenwich Hospital, or that of Morden, beside Blackheath ; 
and in wealth, from a little endowment of four shillings a week 
and a two-roomed cottage for four old women, to an annuity of 
forty pounds a year, with lodgings, coals, and light for as many 
old men. There are quiet and peaceful almshouses even though 
they stand beside noisy thoroughfares. Could anything be 
sweeter and more peaceful than Amyas’s Houses, lying lost and 
forgotten behind Old Street? or than Beeman’s at the back of 
the Kingsland Road, or the Trinity Almshouses in the midst of 
Whitechapel? And there are others which seem as if all the 
noise of the street must perpetually beat about the ears of the 
unhappy residents. There are some with a chapel and a chap- 
lain, and some with a chapel but no chaplain. There is a school 
attached to some, as at the Milburn Hospice in the Stamford Hill 
Road ; there is a garden with some, as at Trinity Hospital, Green- 
wich ; and a fair court with others, as at Emmanuel, Westminster. 
In some the almsfolk look cheerful and happy, their anxieties be- 
ing ended ; in others they are gloomy and grumpy, as if all their 
troubles were to come ; in some the people are always walking 
about, talking with their friends, chirruping with each other, and 
basking in the sun ; while in others there is never anybody to be 
seen, and the old people are all hiding in their beds. In a song of 
almshouses, all these things and many more could be explained. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


49 


On a certain Saturday afternoon last July, a day wlien tlie sun 
was hot, the sky clear, and the breeze cool ; when all the old men 
of all the almshouses between Shoreditch on the south and Tot- 
tenham on the north were out in the sun, and all the old ladies 
were out in the shade — for behold ! this is the way of the world : 
the old men seek the sun because it is the source of heat, which 
is strength, and women seek the shade, where they can watch 
the sunshine and admire heat and strength — there sat in the 
chapel at Lilly’s, which was open, one of the almswomen. She 
occupied the square pew, where there are cushions. She was 
not old, being no more than sixty or so, which is young for a 
colleger at Lilly’s, but she looked old because her hair was so 
very white and she sat so very still. Her eyes were closed, so 
that you might have thought her asleep. But she was not 
asleep — she was blind. 

Close beside her, on one of the benches of the four long pews, 
her feet up, her back against the wall, sat a young girl of fifteen 
or so, reading a story-book. She was a pretty girl, with delicate 
features of the London type, very capable of a quick repartee 
and not unaccustomed to a rough joke. The two sat in perfec’i 
silence because the old lady had been taking her afternoon nap 
and still felt restful, and the girl was absorbed in the book. 

Lilly’s is a venerable but not a splendid foundation. The 
name of its founder, Josiah Lilly, citizen and pewterer, is com- 
memorated on a stone tablet let into the pediment above the 
great door in the middle. It consists of a single row of cot- 
tages in dull red brick, each containing two rooms, one above 
and one below, with a kitchen or washhouse behind. In most of 
the windows, which are old-fashioned, with diamond panes set 
in lead, there is a geranium, and in some there is a neat white 
blind half down, as the respectable classes of London love 
to have it. If any that runs will lift his eyes to read, he may 
observe, all round London, wherever the neat little cottage pre- 
vails, that the blinds are always half down. It is the first as- 
sertion of respectability, the first step towards gentility. The 
negro, with a skin like a crocodile for hardness, buys him a mos- 
quito curtain when he intends to soar; the London housewife, 
when she first develops ambitions, hangs out the blind half-mast 
down, as a kind of flag, and why one knoweth not. Nobody is 
more respectable than an old almswoman, so that the white blind 
3 


60 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


thus adjusted is not uncommon. In front of the cottages is a 
narrow stone pavement, which makes a convenient walk on fine 
mornings, and there is a good-sized oblong patch of ground laid 
out as a vegetable garden, with potatoes and cabbages. It is 
separated from the road by a low brick wall having a wicket- 
gate in the middle. There are five cottages on either side of a 
great door under the pediment, which opens into quite the small- 
est chapel in this realm of England. It has a window with a 
semicircular head, a door nearly of its own width, a reading-desk 
and railed communion-table, a square pew painted white with 
cushions and hassocks, and four long pews, also painted white 
and without cushions, and all of the kind which exasperates ec- 
clesiastics, who would, if they could, take them away and substi- 
tute open benches, and so destroy the character of the little 
chapel. Nobody, outside Lilly’s, knows whether there is a chap- 
lain on the foundation, or if service is ever held in it, or if it is 
only maintained as a place of meditation and repose. 

The old blind woman was Mrs. Monument. How she got into 
the almshouses is not known, but Lady Mildred may be suspected 
of a helping hand. As a general rule it is almost as hard for a 
poor woman to get into an almshouse as for a rich man to get 
into the kingdom of heaven. Not for want of qualified persons, 
for of such there is never any lack, but by reason of the push- 
ing, fighting, and shoving over every vacancy. However, she was 
in, and had been in for thirteen years, enjoying a time of per- 
fect rest and quiet, though she was only separated from the 
noisy world by a low brick wall, and from absolute indigence by 
her cottage, her ten shillings a week, and such additions as were 
made by Lady Mildred, as, for instance, the attendance of her 
granddaughter, the girl who sat reading in the long pew, and 
found waiting on her grandmother a much easier way of life 
than any enjoyed by her friends. It was, indeed, a time of great 
peace which had come to this poor woman ; of physical repose ; 
of content and restfulness, which had settled upon her heart like 
the sunshine which poured this afternoon into the open door of 
the little temple, broadening as the sun sloped westward. She 
wanted nothing ; her boys had turned out steady, and her daugh- 
ters were respectable. To thank the Lord for the respectability 
of one’s daughters seldom occurs to the class where this quality 
is assumed ; but there are other circles where it is hoped for but 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


51 


not always found. She sat in the chapel because it was cool 
there, and, though only a few feet from the door were the hurry- 
ing footsteps and the roll of vehicles and the jingling of the 
tram, there clung about the place, as about every place of wor- 
ship, however small and mean, a sense of peace and safety, like 
the glory of the Lord about his house. 

I know not how long she had been sitting there, but most like- 
ly since her dinner — an event which at Lilly’s is of much less 
importance than it is at the Mansion House. That function was 
usually celebrated at one o’clock, and now it was four. She 
had taken her nap and was quite awake, as one could tell by the 
movement of her fingers. The blind sit long and patiently ; they 
are not great talkers, but they think continually. Conceited 
persons who read many books secretly believe that nobody can 
think who does not read. As if the book of experience ever 
passed through the printing-press ! As if every old woman has 
not got enough out of her own life to occupy her thoughts for 
another hundred and fifty years? Why, this old woman had 
been young, and therefore comely ; she had been a bride and a 
mother ; she had known grievous trouble, with the helpless shame 
of a bad husband ; she had worked single-handed to support her 
children ; they were grown up now and doing well ; she had no 
anxiety about them or about her own daily bread ; she was grow- 
ing old, but without pain ; her world was in darkness ; her life 
was ended save for the things which might happen to the chil- 
dren, and for whatever pains and bodily disease might presently 
fall upon herself. To feel and to understand that nothing re- 
mains in life ; that everything has been enjoyed or endured ; 
that the work is all done ; that there will be no more wages, no 
more promotion, no more hopes, no more rewards, no more fail- 
ures ; that there remains only the short downward slope which 
may be perhaps taken with a run and a leap — this alone must 
be a very serious and awful thing, though it is the common lot, 
and therefore, one fain would think, cannot be bad for man. Yet 
one would pray for a little breathing-time, a short space between 
work and the end, in which, the tools laid down, one may fold 
the hands, recover and gather together scattered and long-for- 
gotten thoughts, and meditate upon things beyond. Therefore I 
have always regarded with peculiar envy and admiration those 
to whom it is granted to spend their latter years in an alms- 


52 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


house. One cannot, I am sure, meditate profitably in the crowd 
of a workhouse. 

Except that Mrs. Monument’s once brown hair was now white, 
and her once white hands were now brown, she was unchanged 
since she left off her work. Her face was ruddy still — a clean, hon- 
est face, with the history of the past written in deep lines and puck- 
ered crow’s-feet. She wore a gown of brown stuff, with a white 
cap and a white apron. And she sat quite composed and still, 
wrapped in her meditations or her memories. The girl with 
her feet up in the long pew was as still as herself, and if one 
was so accustomed to the road as not to hear its noise, the 
chapel was as silent as a West Indian forest. There was a fool- 
ish bee who came buzzing about the chapel in search of flow- 
ers, and, finding none, got angry, and so forgot how he came in. 
Presently he saw the sunshine pouring in through the open door 
and flew out, and the place was quiet again. Next Mrs. Monu- 
ment perceived that two of her fellow-lodgers were walking 
along the flags in front of the cottages — she knew the footsteps 
and concluded that certain rheumatic pains were better ; and 
then she heard something which caused her to start and sit 
upright, and brought a glow to her cheek and brightness to 
her lips. 

“ Rhoder !” she cried, “ that’s my boy’s step. It’s your uncle 
Claude. Get up, girl, and bring him here.” 

Then she waited in joyful expectation. There were other 
footsteps, whose she knew not. But she rose and left the pew 
and stood in the doorway. 

“ Mother,” said Claude, kissing her. 

“ My son,” she replied, lightly passing her hand over his face, 

I did not expect you to-day. Who is with you ? I heard girls’ 
steps. Are you keeping company at last, Claude ?” 

“ They are — two young ladies, mother, come to see you.” 

“ Two young ladies ! Well, ask them to the house. Rhoder, 
you go before and put out the chairs.” 

Claude led his mother to her cottage at the end of the row. 
There were three chairs in the sitting-room. The old lady took 
one — the arm-chair by the fireplace — and the two girls the oth- 
ers. Rhoda stood beside her grandmother, gazing curiously at 
the visitors. 

“ Mother,” said Claude, “ you remember your little Polly ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


53 


“ Remember my dear Polly ? AVhy, Claude, as if I could for- 
get her !” 

“We have not talked much about her lately, have we ?” 

“ Have you seen her, Claude ?” She caught his arm. “ Oh ! 
have you seen her ? Lady Mildred told me you were not to see 
her till the time came. Tell me — what is she like ?” 

“ I have seen her, mother. She is grown a tall and beautiful 
girl. She has the manners and the education of a lady. You 
will never regret that you gave her up.” 

“ It was to save her from a terrible danger, my dear. I said 
to myself, ‘ Surely if one of these can be spared, I ought to 
spare her.’ So I let her go.” 

“And this danger — is it over?” Claude thought she meant 
possible loss of work, poverty, out-door relief, or the Union, 
which he remembered as among the bogies of his childhood. 

“ You are all grown-up now. If what I feared were to hap- 
pen — but it never can — it would not be quite so bad for you 
now. Sam is a great man, and you’re doing something for 
yourself, and Melenda’s in steady work — oh, yes, you could not 
be tempted.” 

“Since the danger is over, then, mother” — Claude took her 
hand again — “ would you like to see your Polly again ?” 

She clutched his hand. “ Claude,” she said, “ you have 
brought her. But I promised Lady Mildred — ” 

“ Lady Mildred sends her.” 

“ Oh !” She started up and cried aloud, holding out her arms, 
“ My child, come to your mother. Quick ! quick !” 

Both the girls sprang to their feet. Claude motioned them 
to wait. 

“ Yes, mother,” he said. “ Patience — patience for a moment. 
You do not know that Polly has been brought up with Lady 
Mildred’s own daughter, Beatrice. They are not known apart. 
No one, but Lady Mildred herself, knows which is Miss El- 
dridge and which is Polly. It is her intention that no one shall 
know yet. I have brought them both to you. They are called 
Valentine and Violet, but which of the two is your daughter I 
cannot tell you.” 

She understood not one word of what Claude was saying, but 
stood with her outstretched arms feeling in the dark for her 
child. “ Give me my Polly,” she cried, hoarsely. 


54 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Claude led Yalentine to her. “ Mother,” he said, “ this is 
Valentine.” 

The blind woman passed her hand quickly over Valentine’s 
face, throat, and figure. Then she threw her arms about her 
and kissed her a hundred times, crying and weeping over her. 
“ Oh ! my dear, my dear,” she said, “ your face is like Claude’s. 
I knew you would take after him and Joe. Tell me your name. 
Let me hear your voice.” 

“ I am Valentine,” said the girl. 

“ Claude’s face, but not his voice. Yet I know the voice. As 
for Valentine — Valentine — what do I know about Valentine? 
Kiss your mother, Polly. Your real name, my dear, is Marla, 
but oh ! I have never thought of you as anything but Polly. 
Oh ! what a tall girl you’ve grown ! Claude’s face and Claude’s 
head, and oh ! Polly — Polly-which-is-Marla ” — she hugged and 
kissed her again — “ to think that for all these years I never had 
you once in my arms ! Oh ! my dear, Pve been thirsting for you.” 

“ But, mother,” said Claude, “ do not be too sure. You have 
not seen Violet yet. Violet is perhaps — ” 

“ Violet ? Oh ! I suppose she is my lady’s own daughter, the 
beautiful Miss Eldridge, that my Polly was so like.” 

“ Mother, you must see the other as well.” Claude laid her 
hands upon Violet’s shoulder. 

“ I am Violet,” said the girl. But while Valentine frankly 
met the hungry mother’s embrace, and gave back kiss for kiss, 
Violet stood shrinking and trembling with pale face. 

The blind woman started. Then she laid her hands upon the 
girl’s face as she had done to Valentine, but slowly and critically. 

“ It is Claude’s face too,” she said. “ But whose voice was 
that ? Speak again, you other, that I took for my girl.” 

‘‘ I am Valentine,” said the other. 

“ What is it, Claude ?” asked the poor, bewildered woman. 
“ They both have your face, and one of their voices, though they 
are different, reminds me of your father’s, whom they never saw. 
Tell me what it means. Oh ! what does it mean ? Which is 
my Polly ?” 

“ It means, mother, what I told you — one of these young la- 
dies is Miss Eldridge and one is Polly. But I do not know which.” 

“ Will you not kiss me too ?” asked Violet. 

The old woman kissed her, but with the coldness induced by 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


55 


doubt. “ I don’t know,” she said, “ I cannot tell which of you 
is my Polly. And as for Miss Beatrice — ” 

“ Oh,” said Valentine, “ never mind Beatrice. Only tell us 
what we can do for you, and if you are happy.” 

Mrs. Monument sat down before she made reply. They be- 
came aware that she was stiffening. The light of love went out 
of her face ; she remembered that one of the two was Lady 
Mildred’s daughter; what if she had poured those first kisses 
upon Miss Beatrice? And how could she sustain enthusiasm 
for half a daughter ? She was chilled and bewildered. 

Presently, however, she answered in measured terms. She 
thanked Miss Beatrice for coming to see her, which she took 
very kindly, and begged to send her duty to her ladyship. As 
for herself, she was as happy as a woman in her position has a 
right to expect. Like many country-bred women, Mrs. Monu- 
ment held the opinion that poor people have no right to expect 
happiness except in small bits and irregular rations. Many 
people in their hearts believe that this remarkable doctrine, with 
the duties of contentment, resignation to injustice, satisfaction 
with things as they are, and unquestioning respect for every one 
who wears a black coat, is laid down in the Bible and Prayer 
Book. Mrs. Monument went on to say that during the last 
winter, which had been mild, and the spring, which was short 
though severe, she had escaped rheumatism to a surprising ex- 
tent, though there were days when her hands felt like dropping ; 
that she was daily and faithfully attended by her granddaugh- 
ter Rhoda; that she was pleased to find her boy Claude still 
kept on by her ladyship — she imagined that he was a kind of 
page or assistant butler in the establishment, though for some 
mysterious reason permitted to prolong his schooling indefi- 
nitely — and at this remark Claude looked at the girls and smiled 
without showing the least confusion. She concluded by saying 
that when the time came for her Polly to know herself, she 
hoped the knowledge would lead her to a lowly and grateful 
spirit, such as became one in her station ; and here both girls 
blushed, because they understood for the first time that the child 
of the lowly and the humble, however she be brought up, is born 
to a “ station.” 

“ My dear mother,” said Claude, “ we are all grateful. Polly 
will be as grateful as you can desire when she learns the truth. 


56 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


Meantime we are all of us filled with a proper spirit of lowly 
humbleness. Valentine and Violet are both as meek as nuns ; 
I am grateful ; you are grateful ; and as for Beatrice^ if she is 
not grateful too, she ought to be ashamed of herself.” 

“ She ought,” said the girls together. 

“ Fie, Claude ! to speak of Lady Mildred’s daughter in such 
a manner. And she a lady !” 

The girls felt hot and ashamed. Was Claude to speak of 
Beatrice as a stahle-hoy speaks of his mistress? But Claude 
only smiled again. 

“ And she a lady !” he echoed, gravely ; “ I had forgotten 
that.” 

“ Claude, my dear,” his mother went on, “ if you are in good 
work, thank Lady Mildred for her help. But don’t speak of 
Miss Beatrice — who is, I suppose, one of those two — those two 
young persons — as if she were a girl of the same rank as your- 
self.” 

“ I will not, mother,” said Claude, seriously. 

“ As for Polly — ” 

“Yes, dear.” It was Valentine who spoke, because Violet 
shrank hack as if she were about to receive a blow. “ Yes — 
mother — when the time comes I hope that I shall know how to 
conduct myself properly and as becomes my station.” 

They all looked at each other. The situation seemed rather 
strained. “And so you worked for twenty years,” said Valen- 
tine, taking the good woman’s hand, “ for twenty years to sup- 
port your children.” 

“ Of course I did, miss — is it Miss Beatrice or is it Polly ? 
Why shouldn’t I ? There’s no hardship and no shame in having 
to work if you can get work to do and wages for your work.” 

“ It is time for your tea, mother,” said Claude. The kettle 
was singing on the hob, for there was a fire, although it was the 
hottest month in the year, and the tea-things were laid. Then, 
while the two girls looked on in silence, Claude made the tea 
and cut the bread-and-butter, and Bhoda poured it out, and 
they broke bread together. 

But the girls were silent and the old lady stiff and starched. 

“ Come, mother,” said Claude, “ one of the girls is Polly, 
you know.” ^ 

“ One of the young ladies is Miss Beatrice, Claude,” said his 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


57 


motlier, “and very good it is of her, and like my lady, her 
mother, to come and see her mother’s old servant. I only wish 
I could see her pretty face.” 

Neither of the girls answered. 

“Why, they both have pretty faces, mother; and as for 
Beatrice, she. is so like Polly that you would never tell the dif- 
ference. And as for Polly, she is so like Beatrice that you 
would never guess that she wasn’t a lady born.” 

“ It’s play-actin’, Claude,” said the old woman, severely. “ If 
I can’t have my own gal to myself, it’s worse than nothing. 
What is it to me to be told that she’s dressed like her mistress 
and quite the lady ? How can she be a lady when her mother 
was once an under-nurse, and then stood over the wash-tub on 
Hackney Marsh, and her father was a working-man ? Don’t tell 
me, Claude. As for her not knowing and you not knowing, 
that’s nonsense. You might as well tell me that you’ve grown 
up a gentleman.” 

“ I did not go so far as to say that, mother,” said the Fellow 
of Trinity. 

“ No ; you’ve got too much sense, my son. And as for Polly, 
if she’ll quit play-actin’ and behave reasonable, I shall be glad 
to see her any time that her mistress will spare her for an after- 
noon.” 

“ Oh ! Val,” said Violet. 

“ My dear,” said Valentine, kissing the poor old lady’s fore- 
head, “we do not know. Indeed we do not know — no one 
knows except Lady Mildred. We will both come if you will 
let us, but we cannot come separately because we do not know.” 

She shook her head. “ I do not know which of you it is, the 
first or the second, but you’ve got between you your father’s 
voice if it’s Polly, and yet it’s her ladyship’s voice if it’s Miss 
Beatrice. And I can’t tell which is which, for the voices have 
got mixed.” 

Then another figure appeared in the doorway. It was a work- 
ing-man — there could be no mistake about that fact. He carried 
a bag of tools in one hand ; on his arm he slung his jacket be- 
cause it was hot, and he preferred to work in his shirt-sleeves ; 
and he really had that loose red handkerchief which the girls 
expected to find about their brother’s neck. There was also a 
pipe in his mouth. Quite the working-man. And perhaps in 
3 * 


68 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


order to make it perfectly clear that he was not play-acting, 
whatever his sisters might he, his hands were grimed with dirt 
and oil. He looked in, saw the assembled company, and was 
astonished. Then he took his pipe out of his mouth, being a 
working-man of some politeness. 

“Well, mother,” he said. Then he kissed his daughter. 
“ Well, Rhoder, my girl.” Then he greeted Claude with a hand- 
shake. “ Admiral, how are you ?” 

“ This is Joe,” Claude explained by way of introduction. 
“Joe lives in Tottenham a little up the road. On Saturdays 
and Sundays he never fails to come here.” 

“ Joe’s a good boy,” said the old lady ; “ he was always a 
good boy to me — a good son, and a good father of nine.” 

Joe sat on the table, which was the only place left to sit upon, 
and received these praises unabashed. The girls observed that 
he was a man of handsome features, and that if his chin was 
shaven, as it doubtless would be on the Sunday morning, his 
hair trimmed, his face washed, and his neck put into a white 
collar, he would be curiously like Claude, only twelve years older, 
or perhaps more — for sixteen years of married life with nine 
children ages a man — and he might have passed for five-and- 
forty. As for his occupation, he was the right-hand man of an 
eminent house-painter, decorator, and plumber of Tottenham — 
one of those useful citizens who lay our pipes for us, and lay 
them wrong ; who adjust our taps and clean our cisterns, work 
mischief with our kitchen ranges, and never leave a house when 
they are permitted to enter it until there is not a screw or a sink 
or a tap or a pipe that is not tinkered and ruined. Theirs is a 
trade so lucrative that it is rapidly rising to the dignity of a 
profession, and before long it will probably rival the bar in 
attracting the brightest and keenest of the English intellect and 
the flower of the universities. Joe might not be clever after 
the cleverness of his father, but he understood his business, and 
knew how to make money for his employer if not for himself. 
And steady with it too, except now and again on Saturday even- 
ings. But we have all of us some weakness, failing, or defect, 
a moral squint, or a halting leg. 

“ Joe,” said Claude, “ I have brought your sister Polly — you 
remember little Polly — to see her mother.” 

“ Oh !” said Joe, unmoved ; “ you have brought her, have you ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


59 


“ It is a long time since you saw her — nineteen years — and 
she has grown up and is a young lady now.” 

“ So it seems,” said Joe; “ who’d ha’ thought it?” But he 
seemed to take little interest in the subject. 

“ She has been brought up entirely with Miss Eldridge, and 
we do not know them apart. Polly is one of these young la- 
dies, but we do not know which.” 

Joe looked from one to the other. Then he smiled. Then 
he passed his hand over his mouth, and the smile went into his 
eyes, which twinkled. 

“ Oh !” he said, “ you don’t know which of these two young 
ladies is Polly and which is the other. Oh ! ah ! And don’t no 
one know ?” 

“ No one but Lady Mildred.” 

“Oh !” here Joe chuckled but choked. “No one don’t know. 
That’s a rum thing, ain’t it, Claude ?” Claude was looking at his 
brother, but he was thinking of the two girls and the strange 
awkwardness of the situation. “ Rhoder, my gal, come here. 
Stand between them two young ladies for a minute. So ! that’ll 
do.” He chuckled again and choked again. “No one don’t 
know. That’s a rum thing, ain’t it? Well, if no one don’t 
know, I don’t know, do I?” 

“ Have you no welcome for your sister, Joe?” asked Claude. 

“ Tell me w^hich she is and I’ll give her a kiss” — Violet shud- 
dered — “ but I can’t kiss ’em both, can I ? Even Sam wouldn’t 
have a workin’-man go so far as that, let alone the missus, when 
she come to hear of it. No, Claude, if one of. ’em’s my sister, 
she’s dressed altogether too fine for me and my Rhoder and the 
kids. Not but what they’re a pair of beauties. We workin’- 
men can’t afford to have sisters in satin like ladies. As for the 
colonel here ” — he laid a friendly hand upon Claude’s shoulder — 
“ he’s a toff, but we’re used to him. I don’t quite know how 
he makes his money, but he says it’s honestly come by — ” 

“ Oh !” said Violet, “ this is shameful. Claude’s money is 
nobly earned.” She could endure a good deal on her own ac- 
count, but was Claude to be -insulted ? 

“ Joe is quite right,” said Claude. 

“ When workin’-men’s sisters go dressed in kid gloves and 
silk ribbons, it’s natural for people to ask how they came by 
the money, and not always easy to answer. So, you see, 


60 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


I can’t say as I am pleased to see Polly. As for Claude’s 
work — ” 

“ Claude’s work,” said Violet, interrupting, “ is of a kind 
wkick you cannot be expected even to understand.” 

“ Go on,” he replied, grinning ; “ I like a girl with a cheek.” 
He got up and replaced the pipe in his mouth, but it had gone 
out. “ Good-bye, mother. I’ll be round in the morning.” He 
nodded to Claude. “ Good-bye, brigadier. As for you two 
young ladies — ” He looked from one to the other, and then 
he turned to his daughter Rhoda. Again he smiled, and the 
smile broadened and his eyes began to dance — if the eyes 
of a working-man at six-and-thirty can be said to dance — and 
he laughed aloud. “ Ho ! ho !” he said ; “ and no one knows !” 
He swung out of the little room laughing still. He laughed 
across the court, and they heard him laughing as he went up 
the road. Now for a man to go along the queen’s highway 
laughing as he goes by himself is a strange and rather a grue- 
some thing. 

“ What is he laughing for f ’ asked Violet. 

“ Laughter,” said Claude, is produced in many ways, but 
especially by the unexpected. The situation is new to him, and 
therefore, I suppose, ludicrous.” 

“Joe’s been a good son always,” said his mother, “though 
not clever like Sam. Oh ! Claude, if you’d only followed in 
Sam’s footsteps. You might have been a board schoolmaster 
by now, like him.” 

“ It can’t be helped, mother. But it seems a pity, doesn’t it ? 
We had better go now, I think, and I’ll bring Polly to see you 
again as. soon as we are quite sure which is Polly ; and then you 
won’t be afraid of mistaking Miss Eldridge for her, will you ?” 

It waii^rying to them all except to Rhoda, when the old lady 
rose and folded her hands across her apron, and said slowly, 
because she was saying the things which are right to say, and 
good manners must not be hurried : “ I wish you humbly good- 
bye, Miss Beatrice, and I send my humble respects to her lady- 
ship. I hope my Polly will continue to give satisfaction, and 
I shall be glad to see her when you leave off play-actin’, as of 
course it’s your fun and you will have it. She can come in the 
afternoon and get back by nine. Or Rhoder’ll go home, and 
she can sleep here if her ladyship can spare her.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


61 


CHAPTER y. 

THE LAW OF ELEVENPENCE HA’pENNY. 

The girls came away from Lilly’s Almshouses a good deal 
cast down. They had only succeeded in causing pain to the 
old lady and bringing shame upon themselves. Therefore they 
hung their heads. 

“After our mother/’ said Valentine, presently, recovering a 
little, “it is our duty to call upon our sister. Can we go to- 
day ?” 

“ I think you had better not,” said Claude. “ For my own 
part a visit to Melenda never fails to make me profoundly 
wretched. I think you had better reserve that visit till another 
day.” 

“ Does she live near here, Claude ?” 

“ She lives about two miles down the road at a place called 
Hoxton. We will go on Monday. Courage !” 

“ We have plenty of courage,” said Violet, deceiving herself 
more than her brother. “ But somehow I am afraid we have 
not quite grasped the situation. Do you think my sister Me- 
lenda will receive us with a welcome?” 

“ No, I should think not,” Claude replied, with decision. 
“ To the best of my knowledge Melenda is always in a rage. 
You know that she is horribly, shamefully poor.” 

“I think, Claude, said Valentine, “that we had better take 
your advice and go on Monday.” 

It was in a tenement-house, and in Ivy Lane, Hoxton, that 
Melenda worked all day and slept at night. All the houses in 
Ivy Lane, or nearly all — because one is a public-house and one 
or two are shops — are tenement-houses. They are mean and 
squalid houses. The doors and door-posts are black for want 
of scrubbing ; the oldest inhabitant cannot remember when they 
were painted last ; the windows are like the windows in Chan- 

E 


62 


CHILDREN OP GIBEON. 


eery Lane for griminess; in most of tlie houses the banisters 
and some of the steps of the narrow stairs have been broken 
away for firewood ; the plaster of the ceiling has long since 
cracked and fallen ; the street is slovenly and uncared for. But 
girls who can afford no more than five shillings a week for a roof 
and four walls sometimes have to fare worse than in Ivy Lane. 
They might, for instance, live in one of the courts which run 
out of Ivy Lane. 

Melenda’s room was the first-floor front. It was furnished 
with a broad wooden bed, one of those which are built for three 
at least, and have often to hold six ; two wooden chairs and a 
round table ; there was also a chest of drawers, and there was 
an open cupboard, the lower part of which formed a box for 
coals. On the hob stood the kettle, in the cupboard were a few 
plates and cups, and in one corner reposed a frying-pan and a 
saucepan. 

Two gray ulsters and two hats were hanging on nails driven 
into the door. This was all the furniture, and it would seem 
difficult to furnish a room for three girls with more simplicity. 

There were three occupants of the room, all young, and all 
at work. One of them sat on the bed, the other two had the 
chairs beside the table. The girl on the bed was a thin, delicate- 
looking creature, about twenty-three or twenty-four years of 
age ; she stooped in the shoulders and had a narrow chest ; her 
face was pale and worn, with lines about the mouth ; her eyes 
were lustrous, and looked larger than they were in reality be- 
cause her cheeks were so thin. They had the patient expression 
which comes to those who suffer continually. Her brown hair 
was thin, and was brushed simply back over her temples, and 
gathered into a knot; she was dressed in an old, a very old, 
gray stuff frock, and her shoes were long since worn into holes 
everywhere, sole and heel and toes. But that mattered little, 
because she never left the house. She sat on the bed because 
there was something wrong with her backbone — a twist of some 
kind — so that she was neither so strong nor so tall as other 
girls, and had to lie down and take rest whenever she “ felt her 
back,” which sometimes happened all day and all night long. 

This was Lotty. She lived here, though she ought to have 
been kept warm, well fed, and in idleness in some asylum, or 
home, or hospital, partly because she knew of no such home ; 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


63 


partly out of the deep friendship and affection which she enter- 
tained for Melenda ; and partly because Melenda would never 
have suffered her to go so long as she could, by working day 
and night, provide for her. 

As for Melenda, Claude’s sister, she sat at the table. She 
was now a girl of three-and-twenty ; she still preserved the red 
locks of her childhood. Red hair has its artistic value, and I 
dare say Melenda’s^ would have looked picturesque had it been 
respectfully treated. But what can you expect of flaming-red 
hair if you treat it in London-girl fashion — that is, if you cut 
the front part of it short, and comb a great hunch over the 
forehead, making a red pillow, and then roll the rest of it up in 
a knot behind ? Such a mode might be taken as a text for the 
preacher and an illustration of the tyranny of fashion, which does 
nothing for its votaries except to make them ridiculous, and to 
destroy any points of beauty that they may possess. The airy, 
fairy, curly, dainty, delicate arrangement over some young la- 
dies’ brows no doubt suggested to the London girl the hunch of 
hair; but the “fringe” was never intended to darken and to 
disfigure the face ; nor was the fringe meant to be a pillow 
of hair ; nor was it meant for thick red hair with no more curl 
in it than there is in a cow’s tail. If Melenda had been better 
advised she would have brushed her hair back and disclosed to 
view a broad, square, and very white forehead which every one 
would have respected. And then her eyes, which were as sharp 
and keen as a pair of electric lights, would have been set in a 
lighter frame. She was not pretty at all, though, like most red- 
haired girls, her complexion was good ; her face was square ; 
her nose was short and straight ; her lips were firmly set ; her 
chin strong. In stature she was shorter than the average ; her 
shoulders were broad and her hands large ; she looked a strong 
girl. But she was thin ; her cheeks were hollow, and her figure 
wanted the filling out which comes of food and enough of it. 
Polly’s sister looked always hungry ; she also looked capable, 
strong-willed, and resolute, and she looked as if she could ex- 
hibit temper if she chose ; lastly, she looked as if she often 
chose. 

The third girl, Lizzie, was of a type which is not unusual in 
London and almost peculiar to the great city. It has many vari- 
ations, and breaks out into eccentricities of all kinds, but, speak- 


64 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


ing generally, Lizzie belonged to that class of London girls who 
are all eyes. They have, it is true, other features as well, but 
their eyes strike one first and most, because they are so large, 
so round, so deep, so full of all imaginable and possible thoughts, 
intentions, and desires. Their mouths are also noticeable, be- 
cause they are small rosebud mouths, generally with parted lips, 
as if the soul of the maiden within were waiting to receive the 
sweet and holy gifts and graces for which her eyes show her 
yearning. It is impossible to see such a girl without longing 
immediately to take her away and place her where she may be 
in perpetual commune with things lofty and spiritual. Lizzie 
had her fringe too, but her hair was brown, not red : it was 
curly and not straight; and as she had some glimmering of 
taste, and did not drag a great solid lump of hair over her fore- 
head, but had a few short curls in its place, the effect was not 
unpleasing. In figure she was tall but slight, and she was too 
thin, though she did not look quite so hungry as Melenda. Her 
head was small and her features possessed a good deal of deli- 
cacy. Men, who are more catholic in such matters than ladies, 
and can discern beauty even where the elbows stick out visibly 
through the sleeves, would say that here were the elements or 
makings of a really beautiful girl, if only she could get a fair 
show. 

By one o’clock in the day they had already worked for six 
hours, because they began at seven. Six hours of almost con- 
tinuous sewing seems a good day’s work ; one would not care 
to sit even over the most delicate embroidery for more than six 
hours a day ; and this was not delicate work at all, but coarse 
work on coarse and heavy stuff — the stuff of which the common- 
est shirts are made — those intended to rasp the skin of the un- 
fortunate native, who would so much prefer to sit in buff, brown, 
or black, and suffer the sun to gently bake him all over. Six 
hours of steady sewing : no student can read with effect for more 
than six hours a day ; no man can write for more than six hours 
if he care to write well ; few men can dig for more or can carry 
burdens for more without a good spell of rest. These girls, 
however, were so strong and so industrious that they were go- 
ing to work for seven hours longer, that is till daylight should 
cease ; if it had been winter they would have worked long after 
daylight ceased. This is a really good day’s work — if you think 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


65 


of it — from seven in the morning till nearly nine at night ; this 
is to work with a will, to work heartily, to expend one’s self 
without stint, to acquiesce in the curse of Adam. It is a day’s 
work which no one but a railway director or an omnibus com- 
pany dares to exact of men ; if a factory were to require such a 
day there would be a strike, with letters to the papers, even if 
the men’s wages were a shilling an hour. A truly wonderful 
day’s work, only to he understood ^hen one realizes the con- 
stant presence, felt hut not seen, of a Fury with serpents in her 
hair and an uplifted lash of scorpions in her hands, sometimes 
called Necessity and sometimes known as Hunger. 

The girls generally worked in silence, but to-day there had 
been a little outbreak on the part of Lizzie, with revolutionary 
sentiments. She was promptly suppressed by Melenda, who 
followed up her victory with a few remarks which clinched the 
submission but left sulkiness and a smouldering fire of rebel- 
lion. 

When the clock struck one — somebody’s clock in some neigh- 
boring street — Melenda looked up and broke the silence. 

‘‘ Lotty,” she said, imperiously, “ lie down this minute.” 

Lotty obeyed without a word. She had been sitting up too 
long, and now she lay back with closed eyes, and her short 
breathing showed that she was suffering. 

The other girl tossed her work impatiently on the table. 

“ One o’clock,” she said. “ It ought to be dinner-time soon. 
What have we got for dinner ?” She laughed derisively. “ And 
what shall we have to-morrow ? And the next day — and the 
day after?” 

“ Don’t, Liz,” said Melenda, softly. “ Don’t, just now. It 
makes her back worse. Let her go to sleep.” 

“ I’m not asleep,” said Lotty, opening her eyes. ‘‘ Don’t 
mind me, Liz.” She stretched out her hand and caught Lizzie 
by the wrist. “ Patience, my dear.” 

“ Patience ! oh !” 

“ It’s only since the concert that it’s come on,” said Melenda, 
looking at her companion as a physician looks upon a patient. 

“ Why shouldn’t it be since the concert, then ?” asked Lizzie. 

“ What have gentlemen got to do interfering with work-girls ?” 
asked Melenda, in reply. 

Lizzie laughed defiantly. 


66 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Why shouldn’t he speak to me ? Speaking’s no harm. 
Why shouldn’t he tell me the truth? That’s no harm. Nobody 
else tells the truth. The clergyman don’t, he says, for fear we 
shouldn’t work any longer ; and the district visitors don’t, for 
fear we should strike. And the work is crool, he says, and the 
wages dreadful ; and so they are.” 

“ I’ve told you that already,” said Melenda. “ Sam says so, too.” 

“ And there’s many better ways of living. Some girls go to 
theatres if they’re pretty enough. And some go and get painted 
in pictures. He says I’m pretty enough for that, and he knows 
gentlemen who’d like to paint my eyes.” 

Liz, he’s deceiving you,” said Melenda. “ Paint your eyes, 
indeed ! He takes you for a fool.” 

“ And he says that it’s no good stopping here. He says it’s 
a God-forgotten life. He says we shall never get better money 
and never any easier work. Think of that, Lotty. We shall 
get old and die, he says, and never any pretty things to put on 
and always not enough to eat, and — ” Here she stopped, being 
out of breath, 

“ It can’t be always,” said Lotty, “ because there must be an 
end some day.” 

“ Oh ! That end !” Lizzie laughed scornfully, because the 
undertaker and the natural end of man’s or woman’s life seems 
so far away to a young girl of seventeen. 

“ It won’t be always,” said Melenda, “ because Sam says we 
are going to have no more rich people very soon. AVe shall 
divide everything, and after that we shall always have enough, 
because the people will k§ep their own when they have got it, 
and there will be no more masters.” 

“You’re a silly, Melenda,” said Lizzie, “to believe such nom 
sense. Besides, if it were true, what would the girls get ? The 
men would only keep it all to themselves and spend it at the 
public-houses.” 

“ Did the gentleman tell you that, too ?” 

“ Never mind what else he told me.” 

“ Liz,” said Lotty, “ you haven’t seen him again, have you ? 
Oh ! promise you won’t talk to him any more. Oh ! this is what 
comes of giving concerts for the people. Liz ! Liz !” 

But Lizzie tossed her head, snatched her hat, and ran away, 
and Lotty sighed and lay back again. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


67 


“ Who was the gentleman, Melenda ?” she asked. “ Don’t let 
her go on talking to gentlemen. Has she seen him again ? Do 
you know his name ?” 

“I do not know. We went to the concert. There was a 
young lady in a black silk frock, and she sang ; and there was 
another in a pink frock, and she sang ; and there was some one 
else who recited ; and one man playing on the piano, and an- 
other on the violin. I’ve told you all that before. When we 
came away I missed Liz in the crowd, and when she came home 
she was all trembling like, and cried when you were asleep, and 
wished she was dead and buried, and told me she’d been for a 
walk with a gentleman, who’d been talking to her about her 
work and her wages, and made her discontented.” 

Lotty sighed, but made no reply. 

“ If we could strike like the men,” said Melenda. “ It’s the 
only thing, Sam says. Why, if we could strike, the fine ladies 
wouldn’t get their things so cheap ; and they know it, and that’s 
why they go about giving concerts to us and pretending to be 
our friends, just to keep us from throwing the work in their 
faces and striking. Sam says so.” 

“ Oh, Melenda ! But the ladies don’t know. If they knew — ” 

“ They do know.” Melenda stamped her foot. She was in 
one of her rages. “ They’ve been told a thousand times. And 
they don’t care — they don’t care — so long as they buy their 
things cheap. Well, we’ve got our freedom, Lotty ; and we 
ain’t obliged to go to their concerts, are we ? And if a gentle- 
man speaks to me. I’ll let him know.” 

Lotty made no reply, but closed her eyes again. She had, in 
fact, nothing to say that could help or even console. She had 
never considered the subject of supply and demand, or else no 
doubt she might have administered solace out of those golden 
rules which keep wages low, hours long, and work scarce. In 
the old days Lotty knew a great quantity of texts which she 
might have found comforting, but she had now forgotten them 
all. Besides, no amount of texts would have brought con- 
solation to Melenda’s bosom, because that young lady was as 
free and emancipated from the trammels of religion as the most 
advanced woman in the whole school. It was, in fact, part of 
her independence not to attend any form of divine service, 
not from any animosity towards the Christian faith, but sim- 


68 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


ply because all forms of worship make demands upon a girPs 
freedom. 

There was some cold tea standing on the chest of drawers, 
with a loaf of bread, and some yellow substance flattered by the 
name of butter. Melenda cut two thick slices and poured out 
some tea. “ Lucky we had a bit of meat for Sunday,” she said. 
“ Take your dinner now, Lotty, dear.” 

“ I am better now,” said Lotty, after their feast. ‘‘ If I rest for 
half an hour I shall be able to work again. Where’s Liz gone ?” 

“You go to sleep,” said Melenda. “As for Liz, she’ll come 
in presently, when she’s ramped round a bit.” 

Lotty obeyed and closed her eyes. 

Then Melenda resumed her work. In a few minutes she saw 
that Lotty was asleep. She might have been dead, so motionless 
she lay and so waxen-pale were her cheeks. In sleep the closed 
eyes lost their worn look, and the lines of her forehead were 
smoothed out, and the face dropped back, so to speak, into the 
mould in which it was cast. Melenda carefully drew the counter- 
pane — it was old and ragged, alas ! and wanted washing — over 
her friend’s arms and chest, and laid her ulster over her feet 
with tender hand and softened eyes, and then sat down again 
and began to stitch with a kind of fierceness. It pleased her 
that she could work twice as fast as the other two, and that 
while her friend was resting she was doing the share of both. 

Meantime, in St. John’s Road, close by, there walked together 
side by side a gentleman and a workgirl. 

“ You will think of it, won’t you ?” he asked. “ It is a cruel 
thing for a pretty girl like you to be slaving so hard. Pretty 
girls were not meant to do hard work, you know. You ought 
to be beautifully dressed, and standing on the stage, and all the 
men in the house clapping because you would look so beautiful.” 

“ I can’t never leave Lotty and Melenda,” the girl replied. 

“ Meet me again this evening. I will be by the church at 
nine. Will you promise ?” 

“ I don’t care,” she said. “ Yes, I will then. But it’s no use. 
I won’t never leave Melenda and Lotty.” 

There are many openings and a splendid variety of choice for 
a girl who insists on her independence, and, therefore, refuses to 
go behind counters or bars, or into offices, or some other peo- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


69 


pie’s houses. She may become a dressmaker, a milliner, or a 
seamstress, she may make shirts, cuffs, collars, or button-holes ; 
she may enter any of the various branches of the great sewing 
mystery : she may go into a factory — there are quantities of 
factories to choose from — but whatever she does and wherever 
she goes she may quite confidently reckon on short pay and 
long hours ; in all probability she will be bullied by the fore- 
man and snubbed, scolded, and nagged by the forewoman ; her 
independence will be the privilege of sleeping in a room shared 
with two or three other girls, together with that of keeping any 
hours she pleases, and she may be certain beforehand that her 
poverty and her helplessness will be exploites to the utmost by 
her employer as much as if she was an omnibus driver ; that 
her whole life will be spent in bad lodgings, on slender com- 
mons, with friends of the poorest and work of the hardest ; she 
may rely upon getting no help from anybody, certainly none 
from her brothers, who — poor fellows — have to pay for their clubs, 
their drinks, and their amusements, and cannot do what they 
would wish for their sisters ; none from the political economist 
to whom an ilbpaid workgirl illustrates in a most satisfactory 
manner the beneficent law of supply and demand, ordained by 
the Creator in the day when he created man and woman for the 
advantage of the middle-man, chosen of his race, and the devel- 
opment of his next noblest creation the manufacturer ; none 
from politicians, because they think that the working-woman 
will never be a danger to any party ; none — alas ! — from ladies, 
because their injustice is too old and stale, and the “ Song of the 
Shirt,” which has been sung for forty years, is known by heart, 
and the sight of the sister who never cries out or complains is 
familiar, and because of that strange hardness of woman’s heart 
towards women, which is a wonderful and a monstrous thing. 
Nor will the working-girl expect any help from her own class, be- 
cause they have not learned to combine, and there is none to teach 
them, and the sharp lessons, including thwacks, kicks, hammer- 
ings, rattening, and boycotting, by which the working-men were 
forced and driven into their union, are impossible for the girls. 

Melenda chose to be a sewing-machine. In this capacity she 
got button-holes to make with her friends. They were three 
really very industrious girls, and with so much industry, their 
rent only four shillings, and bread lower than ever it has been 


10 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


known before, and likely to be cheaper still, and tea and sugar 
always “ down again,” they ought to do very well indeed, and 
be able to buy themselves pretty frocks, and perhaps save money, 
and to go about with rosy cheeks, and they should every morn- 
ing be ready to greet the rosy sun with a hymn of praise. That 
they did not do any of these things, that their clothes were 
ragged, their cheeks pale, their eyelids heavy, their purse empty, 
was due to the action of a very remarkable law in political econ- 
omy — a science which most wonderfully illustrates the divine 
goodness and the beneficence of creation. This law has hith- 
erto, I believe, escaped the eye of all the professors. It is the 
law of the lower limit, which will be better understood by being 
named after an outward and visible sign, the most obvious and 
best-known result of its beneficent operation. I have therefore 
ventured to call it the Law^ of Elevenpence Ha’penny. It has been 
found, in fact, by the employers of woman’s labor, who are one 
and all the most humane, the most considerate, and the most un- 
selfish creatures in existence, that there is a limit of wage below 
which human life cannot be sustained. It is highly to their 
credit that they seldom try to get below this limit, which is 
exactly marked by the wage of elevenpence ha’penny a day. 
Therefore no working-woman, of those who work at home, is al- 
lowed to make more, because this would be a fiying in the face 
of the eternal laws. And it would be clearly inhuman to ofier 
less. To be sure the women sometimes get less because they 
are often out of work ; but the employers cannot be blamed for 
that. The Law of Elevenpence Ha’penny, or the law of the lower 
limit, is the only law that humanity is called upon to obey, and 
the conscience of those who pay the girls at this rate of wages 
is calm and easy. One positively envies the conscience of the 
wholesale match-maker, the wholesale jam-maker, the wholesale 
shirt-maker, the wholesale maker of anything which may be made 
or sewn by the hands of women and girls. The wickedness of 
the men who refuse to obey this law (designed at the creation 
for them as well as for women) is part of the universal depravity 
which causes men to think and act for themselves, without any 
respect for law or authority in religion, politics, morals, manners, 
and customs. 

The Law of Elevenpence Ha’penny. As Melenda worked ex- 
actly two and a half times faster than Lotty, and Lizzie one and 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


11 


a half times, it follows that to produce an average of elevenpence 
ha’penny, Melenda should earn seventeenpence and five twenti- 
eths, and Lizzie tenpence and seven twentieths, and Lotty six- 
pence and nine tenths, and that they did so shows how good a 
worker Melenda was. Sometimes, however, there was less, be- 
cause work has to be taken back and fetched, and there are de- 
lays in getting fresh work. At the best, therefore, these girls 
between them could earn seventeen shillings and threepence a 
week. Their rent was four shillings, so that there was left the 
sum of thirteen shillings and threepence for everything else. 
That is to say, the splendid sum of sevenpence and four sev- 
enths apiece, or very nearly sevenpence ha’penny a day, remained 
for all their wants. 

My very dear young lady, you who sit at home in ease, how 
would you like to find yourself in food, frocks, fire, furniture, 
music, boots, bonnets, books, trinkets, gloves, and all the thou- 
sand-and-one things that go to make a girl’s life, on sevenpence 
ha’penny a day ? But these girls are not like you ? That, I 
assure you, is not at all the case. It is a falsehood invented 
by the devil when he invented the figment of nobility, gentry, 
and villain. If you desire to know what the work-girl really is, 
go to the looking-glass and study very carefully, not your bon- 
net, which is very becoming, nor your face, which is so pretty 
that one wishes he were young enough to fall in love with it, nor 
the dressing of your hair, which might be much more artistic, 
but the unseen self which lies behind the face. That is the 
working-girl as well as yourself, my dear young friend. 

In half an hour or so Lizzie came back, quiet and subdued, but 
with a rosy fiush on her cheek and brightened eyes. 

“ I’ve had dinner,” she answered when Melenda pointed to 
the tea-pot. “ I’ve had an egg and a cup of coffee. It was 
given to me — by — a young girl I know.” 

Melenda looked at her sharply, but said nothing. 

Then there was silence in the room save for the click of the 
needle and the thimble and the rustling of the stuff in which 
they were sewing the button-holes. But Melenda was disturbed 
and ill at ease, partly on account of Lizzie and the unknown 
gentleman who made her discontented, and partly because it 
seemed to her — perhaps the bread-and-butter had not been thick 
enough — as if a man’s voice were repeating aloud, over and over 


V2 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


again, banging and beating tbe words into her head, ‘‘ All your 
lives — all your lives and then the voice of her brother Sam — 
it was a deep, rich bass — chimed in, saying, “ Why don’t you 
strike ? Why don’t you strike ?” This was not agreeable. But 
the time passed on, and the distant clock struck two, three, and four 
while Lotty still slept on and the other two worked in silence. 

It was just after the striking of four that the girls heard foot- 
steps in the narrow passage below, and voices which were not 
the voices of their fellow-lodgers. One of the voices said, “ Will 
you wait below, Claude ? We would rather go up alone.” 

And then the door opened, and two young ladies appeared. 
They were young ladies the like of whom the girls had seldom, 
if ever, seen, for they were so beautiful and beautifully dressed, 
and at the sight of their frocks and their hats the soul of Lizzie 
sank within her. The district visitor they knew, because she 
sometimes called and always had a fight with Melenda, but she 
was not by any means beautifully dressed. Also certain ladies 
had once or twice come into their street and gone about the 
houses curiously, and received sharp replies to their questions. 
But they were not beautiful. 

“ Is there a girl here named Melenda ?” asked one of them. 

Lotty awoke, and sat upright with a start. Lizzie stared and 
dropped her work and her thimble, which rolled under the 
drawers, and afterwards half an hour was wasted in looking for 
it. The owner of the name, suspecting a visit from the people 
in the interests of church services, only looked up and nodded. 

Then the two young ladies stepped forward and seized each 
a hand, saying, softly, 

“ Oh, Melenda, we are your sister Polly.” 

Alas ! that Polly should have chosen this day of all days for 
her return after an absence of nineteen years. 


CHAPTER VI. 

AN UNLUCKY DAY. 

Claude waited below in Ivy Lane on the shady side of the 
street. It was full of children playing noisily, and there were 
soft and murmurous echoes, poetically speaking, from Hoxton 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


78 


Street on the right, where there is a perpetual market. Pres- 
ently he became aware of a shrill voice rapidly rising, which he 
easily recognized as his sister Melenda’s voice. 

The voice rose so loud that he could catch some of the words. 
And it seemed to him as if this visit promised to be even a 
greater failure than that to the almshouse. At last the voice 
grew so shrill and the language so unmistakable, that he thought 
he ought to follow the girls if only to protect them. 

When he opened the door he was greeted by Melenda herself 
with a derisive laugh. 

“ Charity boy !” she said, pointing with her forefinger. 

He had, however, heard this remark before, and now received 
it without emotion. 

Valentine was standing at the table with flushed face and a 
look of bewilderment and pain. Violet was cowering in Lizzie’s 
chair — absolutely cowering — and crying. Lotty was looking on, 
troubled and perplexed. Lizzie sat on the bed beside her, the 
work in her hands, making believe that the scene neither inter- 
ested nor concerned her, and that she was wholly occupied and 
absorbed in her button-holes, which she handled ostentatiously, 
holding the garment up to the light, spreading it on her knee, 
contemplating it with a needle in her mouth, and in other ways 
proclaiming her entire unconsciousness of the row. Yet she lis- 
tened and smiled with pride when Melenda surpassed herself, 
and from time to time she lifted her great eyes and took in 
some fresh detail of the ladies’ dresses. Oh ! could she ever 
have dreamed of things so beautiful ? 

“ Charity boy !” repeated Melenda. “ Of course he brought 
the charity girl with him.” 

Claude made no reply, which disconcerted her. And he 
looked at her not angrily, but gravely and wonderingly, which 
made her still more angry. 

“What is the matter, Valentine?” he asked, after a pause. 
“ Has my sister been rude to you ?” 

“Yes,” Melenda broke in; “I’ve been rude to both of ’em. 
I’ve told them the truth, and I wish they may like it and get it 
every day. Rude ? Oh ! yes, I’ve been rude. Don’t make any 
error about that, Claude.” She stuck — I use the word deliber- 
ately — she stuck her elbows on the table and put on her most 
defiant face. 

4 


74 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


“ What is the truth, Melenda ?” Claude asked her ; “ will you 
tell it to me as well ?” 

The aggravating thing with Claude was that you could never 
make him angry by calling him names, not even by calling him a 
charity boy. To-day, being in a rage royal, Melenda began with 
this supreme insult. She generally ended with it. People ought 
to get angry when you call them names, else there is no reason 
in calling names ; and then, what a w'eapon thrown away ! Not 
to get angry in return is unkind towards one’s fellow-creatures ; 
it betrays want of sympathy ; it arrogates a disgusting superi- 
ority ; it makes people who have yielded to their wrath, and 
slung all the names they could find, hot and ashamed of them- 
selves. Common people, ordinary, simple, unaffected people, not 
stuck-up people, get very angry when they are called names, and 
retaliate by calling worse names immediately by return post, or 
they take to punching heads or jumping upon one another. 
Claude, for his own exasperating part, only looked at his sister 
with his grave eyes as if he were wondering where she was feel- 
ing the pain and what ought to be done for it. 

“ Let us have the whole truth, Melenda.” 

“ The truth is that we don’t want fine ladies here. We’re 
Work-girls, and we’ve got to earn our living, and we ain’t ashamed 
of it. We don’t want to be looked at like as if we were ele- 
phants in a circus. Let ’em go and look at somebody else. We 
ain’t a show. Lotty ain’t a clown ; I ain’t a jumping-horse ; Liz 
ain’t a salamander.” 

“ Don’t you want to see your sister again, Melenda ?” 

“ My sister !” She threw out her arms with a fine gesture, 
free and unstudied. “ Oh ! look at me and look at them. Lis- 
ten to him — my sister ! Look at my frock, and Lotty’s frock, 
and Lizzie’s frock, and look at theirs. My sister ! And they 
can’t tell which it is. My sister ! If you come to that — ” 

“ But one of these young ladies is your sister — and mine.” 

“ It’s the first I’ve heard of Polly being a young lady. Which 
of ’em is it, then ? Is it her, who can’t be spoken to but she be- 
gins to cry ? or her ” — Melenda suited gesture with her thumb 
to words, so that no mistake should be possible — “ who wants 
to shake hands and to kiss ? A pretty kiss !” 

“ They only learned a day or two ago that they had a sister. 
Was it unkind in them to make themselves knowm to you as 
quickly as they CQuld 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


75 


“ Well, they’re curious, and they’ve had their curiosity. 
They’ve seen me, and now they may go away and boast to all 
the swells that they’ve got a sister who makes button - holes. 
Sooner they go the better. Come ! they’ve wasted time enough 
already.” 

“You are very unkind,” said Valentine. “If we were to 
come again when you were not so busy with work — ” 

“ No,” said Melenda, “ I don’t want to see either of you never 
again. One of you is Polly, because you say so, and I don’t 
see why you should be proud of being my sister. Well, when 
Polly leaves off pretending to be a lady she may come here, 
and not before.” 

“ Your sister,” said Claude, “ can never lay aside that pretence.” 

“ Mother hadn’t ought to let her go,” the girl went on ; “I 
always said so. Why should Polly be brought up with nothing 
to do all her life but to sit down and to eat and drink ?” 

“ On the contrary,” said Claude, “ she has done a great deal.” 

“ Does she go dressed like this ?” asked Melenda, springing 
to her feet, and displaying with rapid gesture the deficiencies 
of her scanty wardrobe, the whole of which was upon her. 
“ Does she get up at six and work all day till nine ? Does she 
have bread-and-butter and tea for all her meals ?” 

“ Oh !” said Valentine, “ if you will only let us help you. We 
did not come here to pry upon you — not out of curiosity — oh ! not 
out of curiosity. We came because we wanted to know our sister.” 

“ Now you know her then, you can go away again. I don’t 
mind. You see what I am. Oh, I know what I’m like, and 
what Liz is like, and Lotty — only Lotty is different. Fine man- 
ners, ours, ain’t they ? Go away and laugh at us.” 

“Indeed, there is nothing to laugh at,” said Valentine. 

“ Then cry over us, like her ” — she meant Violet. “ I dare 
say she likes crying. If a girl had said half to me that I’ve said 
to her I’d have had her hair out of her head.” 

“You are cruel,” said Violet ; “ is it our fault that Polly was 
taken from you ?” 

“Didn’t say whose fault it was. It’s no concern of mine. 
You’ve got my thimble, Liz. Where’s your own?” 

“ Melenda, try to be gracious,” said Claude. “ Pretend to 
know something about manners. Make believe that Sam is here. 
You generally behave, you know, when Sam is present.” 


76 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Melenda sniffed. “ Come,” she said, returning to the charge', 
“ you were curious to see your sister, weren’t you ? Well, you’ve 
seen her, and I dare say you’ll ask her to tea and shrimps and 
meet your fine friends. I’ll come with Joe and Sam and some 
of Joe’s kids if you like, to make a family party. And now you 
can go away and be mighty thankful that you weren’t left to 
grow up with your mother and me. Else you’d be sitting here 
this moment where Liz is sitting, and working like Liz is 
working.” 

She sat down, picked up her' wmrk, and began to sew again 
violently. 

Valentine sighed. “You shall see me again,” she said, 
“ whether you like it or not. You cannot lock the door in your 
sister’s face. I will make you want to see me.” 

Melenda went on sewing without any reply. 

Then Valentine turned to Lotty. 

“Tell me,” she said, “are you perhaps a cousin of Melenda’s 
and mine ?” 

“ No,” said Lotty, “ I’m only her friend. We’ve lived to- 
gether for eight years, Melenda and me.” 

“ And do you sew every day ?” 

“ Unless we’re out of work we do. It is all we have learned.” 

“ But you don’t look strong enough for the work.” 

“ I’m stronger than I look,” said Lotty, smiling. “ I can do 
a good bit of work. It’s my back which isn’t strong, and makes 
me cough sometimes. I’ve got to lie down a great deal. And 
then Melenda works for me.” She looked up shyly. “You 
won’t mind what Melenda said, will you, miss ? She’s put out 
to-day about something — something somebody said to Liz about 
the work, it was. Please don’t mind ; she’s easy put out, but 
she’s the best heart in the world.” 

“ You’ll just have to lie down again, Lotty,” said Melenda, “ if 
you talk so much.” 

“ What is your name ?” asked Valentine. 

“ Lotty — Charlotte East. This is Liz. Her father lives down- 
stairs, but she lives and works with us. She’s seven years 
younger than me. I’m twenty-four and Liz is seventeen.” 

“Do you like your work, my dear?” Valentine asked Lizzie. 

The girl turned her great, heavy eyes upward. “ No, I don’t,’' 
she replied, slowly. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 11 

“ If you’ve got to do it, what’s the odds whether you like it 
or whether you don’t ?” asked Melenda. 

“ Come, Valentine,” said Violet, “it is no use staying.” 

“ Not a bit,” said Melenda. 

“Have you no kind word for us at all, Melenda?” Valentine 
asked. 

“ Look here,” the girl replied ; “ you don’t belong to us, nei- 
ther of you. Go away to the people you do belong to — you and 
Claude. They’re the people that keep us girls on a shilling a 
day, so as they can get their dresses cheap. Stick to them. 
They’re the people who’ve stolen the land and the labor and ev- 
erything that’s made. Sam says so. Leave us alone. Don’t 
come here and laugh at us. I won’t have it. And as for you ” 
— she turned to Violet, who shrank back and caught Claude by 
the arm — “ dare to come again and cry at us ! If you do I’ll 
tear your bonnet off.” 

“ You are behaving very rudely, Melenda,” said Claude. 

She sniffed again and tossed her head. 

Since, however, she continued in this hard and unrepentant 
mood, and showed no sign of melting, there was nothing left but 
to withdraw, which they did, retreating in good order, as the 
history books say, or rolling sullenly over the border, as they 
also say. That is, the enemy did not shove them down-stairs, 
nor tear off their bonnets, nor hurl things after them, nor call 
them names, but suffered them to retire unmolested. To be 
sure, they were routed ; there was no possibility of mistake about 
that. 

For at least two hours Melenda continued stitching in absolute 
silence, but her lips moved. At the expiration of this period she 
broke out into short inter jectional phrases, which showed that her 
mind was powerfully working. “ I’m glad I spoke out — did her 
good for once — I won’t be cried at — we don’t want curious ones 
here — teach them to keep their own places,” and so forth — not 
original or novel phrases, and perhaps wanting in dignity, but 
with some fire. Then she relapsed into silence again. 

It was nearly nine o’clock when it became too dark to see the 
work any longer, and they put it by. 

Then Lizzie began to make certain preparations. She took a 
hat out of a drawer — a hat with a feather in it. She tied a 
bright-colored ribbon round her neck, and she put on her ulster, 

F 


18 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


which is a workgirl’s full dress for summer or for winter, only 
in summer there is not always a frock under it. 

“ Liz, dear,” said Lotty, “ you won’t be late, will you ? And, 
Liz — don’t — oh, Liz — don’t talk with any more gentlemen.” 

Lizzie made no reply, and disappeared. 

“ She’s put on her best ribbon,” Lotty said, with a sigh, “ her 
Sunday ribbon. What’s that for, I wonder ?” 

Melenda made no reply. She was thinking of her own sister, 
not of Lizzie. 

Oh,” she cried presently, throwing out her arms in a gesture 
unknown to the stage, but natural and very striking ; “ if she’d 
only come alone ! But to come in a pair, and for both to sit 
and smile and say they didn’t know which of them was Polly, 
as if it didn’t matter what became of her — I suppose because 
she was a poor girl and her mother was a washerwoman, and you 
and me and Liz beneath their notice, and it was all pride and 
curiosity and looking down upon us — I couldn’t bear it, Lotty, 
so I spoke up. I’m glad I did.” 

She showed her gladness by bursting into tears. 

‘‘ I’d do it again. If they come again I’d do it again. With 
their kid gloves and their real flowers and gold chains, and to 
look about the room as if we were wild beasts at a show, and a 
teapot a thing they’d never seen before. We don’t want ’em. 
Let ’em leave us to ourselves. We can do our work without 
them, and bear what we’ve got to bear, Lotty, you and me to- 
gether, can’t we ?” 

“ They looked sorry,” said Lotty, doubtfully ; “ they’d got 
kind faces and they spoke kind.” 

“ I don’t know,” Melenda went on, “ which I hate the most — 
the one who looked as if the very sight of us made her sick and 
ashamed — that was the one who began to cry when I up and 
checked her; or the one who wouldn’t cry, and on’y stared as 
as if I was something strange, and kep’ saying that I was mis- 
taken, and wouldn’t get into a rage, say what I liked. Just like 
Claude — you can’t put Claude in a rage. I believe that one 
must be Polly. All the same I hate her ; I hate ’em both.” 

“ I wouldn’t hate them if I were you, Melenda,” said Lotty. 

What’s the good ? They only came to see if they could help 
you, p’r’aps.” 

They help me ? Likely ! I wouldn’t have their help nor 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


79 


Claude’s neither if I was starving. As for Polly being my sis- 
ter, they took her away and we’ve lost her.” 

“ If it was to dress her up and make her a lady, so much the 
better for her. I wish somebody would take us all three away 
and do just the same.” 

“You’ve no spirit, Lotty. Of course it’s your poor back. 
But you’ve no spirit.” 

Melenda put on her hat and went down-stairs into the streets. 
She always finished the day in this manner. After fifteen hours 
of sewing in one room and in one position it is necessary to get 
change and fresh air. Therefore two of the girls roamed the 
streets, making of Hoxton Street and Pitfield Street and the 
City Road and Old Street their boulevard from nine o’clock or 
so until twelve. The society of the streets is mixed ; things are 
said in them which in other circles are left unsaid ; but there is 
life and a faint semblance of joy, and some kind of laughter 
and light and fresh air. Melenda passed through the children 
playing in Ivy Lane, and the groups of mothers standing about 
and talking together, and turned into Hoxton Street. She 
avoided for once the crowd on the pavement, and trudged along 
in the road behind the costers’ carts, for it is a street where they 
hold perpetual market. When she came to the end of Hoxton 
Street she walked on till she came to the bridge over the canal. 
It is a strange place. The water lies below black and rather 
terrible. Melenda had heard legends of girls throwing them- 
selves into that black water when they were tired of things. 
There is generally visible a barge with its light and fire. To- 
night the girl’s brain, as she leaned over the parapet, was full of 
tumult. Her own sister had come back to her, and she had 
driven her away with shameful words and insults. To be sure 
she had long forgotten the very existence of her sister. Perhaps, 
from time to time, she thought of her as one thinks of an old 
playmate gone away years ago to Australia or to the western lands, 
never to return. But she had come back — the little Polly — 
transformed into a young lady, and Melenda had used hard words. 

It was nearly midnight when she got home. A few of the 
children were still in the court, but they were sitting on the door- 
step, and some of them asleep : these were the children who 
were afraid to go up-stairs because father was drunk and not 
yet gone to sleep. A few women were still talking, but most had 


80 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


gone home and to bed. One or two of the men were singing or 
roaring or crying, according to tbeir habits when drunk ; but not 
many, because it was Monday night, which is generally a sober 
time. In the room on the first-floor front Liz was in bed and 
sound asleep. Lotty was lying on her back, watching and waiting. 

“Melenda,” she whispered, “they were beautiful young la- 
dies. They meant to be kind. Don’t make them cry if they 
come again.” 

“ There oughtn’t to have been but one,” said Melenda, severe- 
ly. “ Go to sleep this minute, Lotty. Polly wasn’t twins.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

AFTER MELENDA. 

In the evening of the same day Lady Mildred was at home. 
Claude’s acquaintance with society was limited, as may be sup- 
posed. He who is climbing must wait until he has reached the 
higher levels before he can think of society. Such an evening 
as this, with the musical laughter of girls, the continuous mur- 
mur of talk, the brightness of the rooms, the atmosphere of hap- 
piness and freedom from care, just as if everything were real, 
solid, and abiding, and everybody were young and happy, and 
were going to remain young and happy, filled Claude with a kind 
of intoxication and delight, and to-night he could admire his 
sister in one of these two girls with a sense of wonder as if it 
were a dream. His life had been serious — the life of one who 
had no chance except to succeed by his own efforts. Society, 
which has no serious aims, holds no place for such a man until 
he has succeeded ; women hold no place in such a man’s life 
until he has got up to a certain elevation. 

“What are you thinking of, Claude?” Valentine asked him. 

“ I was thinking of contrasts and incongruities,” he replied. 

“ The contrast of the afternoon with the evening. Yes. But 
if you cannot forget those things you will begin to think that 
we are mocking at misery. What would Melenda think and 
say if she were to stand among us suddenly !” 

“ One can hardly imagine,” Claude laughed, “ anything more 
incongruous.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


81 


I suppose slie would ask ua how we could possibly feel hap- 
py on the very day when we had seen her home and her friends. 
And I am sure she would not understand how we could sing 
and laugh and yet not forget her or cease to think of her. So- 
ciety must have its incongruities — I suppose, because we must 
hide away so much of ourselves.” 

At the other end of the room was Violet in the middle of a 
group, talking, with bright eyes and apparently the lightest heart 
in the world. 

“ Violet had a hysterical fit when we came home this after- 
noon,” Valentine whispered. “ Melenda was too much for her. 
Yet she puts on a brave face, and nobody would suspect the truth.” 

With her — one of her group — was Jack Conyers. As Valen- 
tine crossed the room with Claude, he glanced quickly from Vi- 
olet to Valentine and then to Claude. 

Strange ! The girls were not only like each other, but they 
both looked like Claude. It was the first opportunity Conyers 
had obtained since hearing of Claude’s relations with Lady Mil- 
dred’s daughters of making a comparison between the girls and 
their brother. Surely with the portrait of Sir Lancelot at five- 
and-twenty gazing upon the room from the wall ; with Lady 
Mildred herself present in the fiesh ; with the two girls, and 
with Claude their brother, there should be data enough to solve 
the problem easily. Jack Conyers, however, like everybody else 
who attempted a solution of the riddle, forgot one essential 
thing. It is this : if two girls are brought up together from 
childhood in exactly the same way, with the same education, the 
same food, the same governors, pastors, and masters, and are 
kept apart from other girls, and are dressed alike, they may grow 
very much like each other ; little points of resemblance may be- 
come accentuated. Chinamen, for instance, who are a very gre- 
garious people, present to the outward world millions of faces 
all exactly alike. Old married people are often observed to 
have grown like each other ; and if you look at a girls’ charity- 
school, where they live all together under one roof, and are sub- 
jected to exactly the same rules and infiuences, you will find 
that they certainly grow to have the same face. 

There is, for instance, a certain reformatory of my acquaint- 
ance in a London suburb. The young ladies belonging to this 
institution are marched in procession to church every Sunday. 

4 * 


82 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


As they pass along the road, the admiring bystander becomes 
presently aware that they are all exactly alike. It is bewilder- 
ing until philosophy lends its light. For the girls are like so 
many sisters : here a dozen twins ; here a triplet or two ; here 
more twins. Some are older, some are younger ; but they are 
all of one family — they are apparently of one father and one 
mother. The reformatory face is striking, but by no means 
pleasing. It looks, in fact, as if Monsieur le Diable has had 
more to do with the girls’ fathers or mothers, or both, than with 
other people’s fathers and mothers. 

No doubt it was due to the nineteen years of close association 
and friendship that Valentine and Violet had grown so much 
alike, and Mr. Conyers, had he been wise, would have looked for 
points of dissimilarity rather than of resemblance. But this he 
did not think of. Besides, the young ladies were not like the 
models who came to his studio : they did not sit to him ; he 
could only study their faces furtively. 

“ They both look like Claude too,” Jack Conyers thought, 
with troubled brow. “ First one looks like him, and then the 
other. If only they wouldn’t dress their hair exactly alike, there 
might be a chance.” 

Other eyes besides his own were curiously watching and com- 
paring Claude with the two girls, for some of the people knew 
that the brother of cme was present, and there was a natural 
anxiety to know which he resembled and what sort of a young 
man he was. Seeing that he was only the son of a working- 
man, it was rather disappointing to find a young man of good 
manners and of excellent appearance, reported to be a Fellow of 
Trinity who had distinguished himself, and was now called to 
the bar. Except that the face was somewhat like the faces of 
the girls, cast like theirs in the oval mould, there was nothing 
at first sight to connect him with one girl more than with the 
other. So that everybody was disappointed and went empty 
away. 

Presently Valentine sang. She had a strong and full con- 
tralto voice, which had been carefully trained and cultivated. 
And she had, besides, the heart of the musician. But she wohld 
not sing more than once. 

“ Claude,” Violet whispered, when the singing ceased, “ can 
you sing ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


83 


Not at all. I have no voice.” 

Nor have I. That is one point of resemblance between us. 
It is part of our inheritance? No voice and no fortune. Of 
course you can paint and draw ?” 

“ No. I can hardly hold a pencil, and I never tried to paint.” 

“ Oh ! That is very strange, because it is the only thing I 
can do at all. In that respect Valentine is like you. I suppose 
you cannot embroider ? I am clever in embroidery.” 

“ No, unfortunately. But I can make Latin and Greek verses : 
that is perhaps a branch of embroidery.” 

“ If you could make English verses I would claim this as a 
point of resemblance. Are you clever at sums ?” 

“ No, not very.” 

Oh ! I am sorry, because I am. Now Valentine can never 
add anything correctly. Are you — tidy ?” 

“ No, not at all.” 

“ I am so glad, because I am the most untidy person in the 
world, and Valentine is the neatest. Her room is like a ship’s 
cabin. Are you fond of dogs and animals ?” 

“ Not very.” 

“ What a pity ! because I am ; and I have the most lovely 
dogs at home — in the country you know. I would not let the 
poor things come to town. But Valentine does not care much 
for them. Do you like music ?” 

“ Yes ; but I cannot play.” 

“ Well, I can play, I suppose, but Valentine is really a musi- 
cian, not an amateur. Well, Claude, this is most exasperating, 
because one moment you are like Valentine and the next you 
are like me. Is there anything else that you can do ?” 

“ I know one or two modern languages and a little law. And 
I can row a little, play cricket a little, play tennis a little — ” 

We can play lawn-tennis too. Claude” — she lowered her 
voice again — “ never mind the points of resemblance. But, oh ! 
it was a truly dreadful afternoon. My poor brother !” 

What she meant was that if she, in one interview, found 
Melenda so unspeakably dreadful, what must be his own feel- 
ings about her when he had always known her ? 

“ As for me,” he replied, intelligently answering her unspoken 
question, “ Melenda has always been my sister. I am used to 
her. But of course she has not been yours.” 


84 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Spare us anotlier interview, Claude. I am selfish, I know. 
But I cannot bear to go there again — just yet.” 

“ You shall not go again unless you wish, Violet. I am afraid 
she was — well — outspoken.” 

“ She was — unspeakable.” 

This was true, and the fact is a suflScient excuse for the silence 
of history as regards her actual words. History, like school- 
master Sam in his class-room, is perpetually wiping out some- 
thing with a sponge. Also, like Sam, History has a board as 
black as Erebus itself to write upon. 

“ Yes ;” it was Jack Conyers’ voice, which was not loud but 
penetrating, and he was talking with Valentine. “Yes; since 
I saw you in Florence I have been irresistibly forced to devote 
myself wholly to art. Such other personal ambitions as I may 
have cherished are now altogether abandoned.” 

“ Indeed ! But there is nothing more delightful than art, Mr. 
Conyers, or more honorable, is there ?” 

“ I shall hope to see you and your sister in my studio some 
happy day. Miss Valentine. My picture will not be completed 
and ready for exhibition for three or four years more. But my 
friends will be allowed to see it in progress.” 

“ I hope we shall see it in the Academy or in the Grosvenor.” 

He put up his hands and shuddered gently. 

“ Not that,” he murmured ; “ anything but that.” 

“ Claude,” said Violet, “ that is the man who paid us so much 
attention last winter in Florence. He really was very useful to 
us ; and he divided his attentions equally, you see, so as to pre- 
vent mistake.” 

“ What mistake ?” 

“ Why, you silly boy, he might have made love to Polly in- 
stead of to Beatrice. He has had ten minutes with Valentine, 
and now he will come to me. Do you believe in him ?” 

“ I knew him at Cambridge. We thought he was clever.” 

“He talks perpetually about himself, as if he very much 
wished to be thought clever; and — I don’t know — but there 
does not seem always the right ring about him. Does there? 
He isn’t real.” 

Presently Claude’s turn came with Lady Mildred. She was 
always gracious — always a grande dame de par le monde — but 
she had never been more gracious or greater than that evening, 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


85 


when she found her opportunity to say a few words for his own 
ear. 

“ Do you remember, Claude,” she ashed him, “ a certain day 
twelve years ago when I took you to the opera, and told you 
that if you wished you could take your own place among the 
people you saw there ?” 

“ I remember all that you ever told me. Lady Mildred.” 

“ Well, the time has come ; you may take your place. I will, 
if you please, place you in as good a set as any one can desire. 
It helps a young man to be seen occasionally in society.” 

“I have never thought much of society. My ambition has 
always been to justify — ” 

“I know it has, Claude. You have more than justified what 
was done for you at first. Otherwise, should I have made you 
known to your sister ?” 

“ But you allowed me to take them to — ” 

“ Yes, Claude. Your sister ought to know her relations. She 
need not associate with them unless she pleases. Perhaps she 
would not quite appreciate you unless she understood what you 
had done. I want her to be proud of you, Claude.” 

“ Thank you,” he said. 

“You think — you feel — that success and personal distinction 
will satisfy your soul, Claude ?” 

“Why,” he replied, wondering, “what else is there? We 
are all fighting for place of some kind, and I am fighting for a 
front place.” 

“ And you think you will be happy when you get that place ?” 

“ I am sure that nothing else will make me happy. Why do 
you ask. Lady Mildred ?” 

“ Be happy, my dear boy, in any way you can. Only do not 
be quite sure that there is no other ambition possible for you.” 

Claude walked away with Conyers about midnight. His 
friend was not quite satisfied. He had not discovered anything, 
and he doubted whether he had made it quite certain that he 
was going to be a great painter. 

“ Well,” he said, “ have you learned anything yet — the truth 
about these young ladies ? That is, if it is not a secret of state ?” 

“ Hot a secret of state at all. Only that we do not know. 
Lady Mildred will tell us when she pleases.” 


86 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


They smoked their cigarettes in silence for a while. 

“Jack,” said Claude, after a pause, “about that girl — the girl 
you were talking about — you know — the girl with the eyes and 
the possible face — the girl you talked of making your model.” 

“ I remember. What about her ?” 

“Don’t do it. Jack. Let the girl stay. 1 have been quite 
lately among girls of her class. Such a girl might very well be 
my own sister. Leave her alone. Jack.” 

“ My dear fellow, out of half a million girls — but have it your 
own way. There are plenty of models, though not many with 
such eyes. But have it your own way. As if any girl could 
be harmed by devoting herself to the service of art !” 

“Yes,” said Claude, “the same thing used to be said in 
Cyprus when they wanted a girl to devote herself to the service 
of Aphrodite.” 

“ If the girl would sit to me I would paint her. That is all. 
But you are quite right, Claude. It would be a pity to turn her 
head. She shall stay with her friends and go on with her sew- 
ing, so far as I am concerned.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

ALICIA. 

“ Well, Jack, as you have not thought fit to call upon me, I 
have come to call upon you.” 

His visitor was a woman no longer in her first youth, but not 
yet much past thirty ; of an age when one begins to say of a 
woman that she still keeps her good looks — a handsome woman, 
large-limbed and tall, with full cheek and smiling mouth ; a good- 
tempered woman, yet one who knew her own mind and had her 
own way. And though she laughed, her eyes had a look in them 
which made Jack, who felt guilty, wish that the visit was over. 

“ Thank you,” he said. “ It has been very rude of me, but I 
have been getting settled. You know that I have at last taken 
a studio.” 

“Really! You may call me Alicia, you know. Jack, just as 
you used to do. I am glad to hear that you have begun to do 
some work.” 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


87 


I have begun my work.” There is a subtle distinction be- 
tween beginning to work and beginning one’s work. 

“ Oh ! And — meanwhile, Jack ?” 

He met those eyes and blushed. 

“ Meanwhile ?” she repeated. “ A man can’t make himself an 
independent gentleman quite for nothing, and you have been play- 
ing that game now for five years. And a man can’t make money 
by painting, unless he is mighty lucky, all at once. Therefore, 
meanwhile. Jack, and until the money begins to come in ?” 

“ What do you mean ?” But he knew very well what she 
meant, because this lady knew all his family history and the ex- 
act amount of the fortune — a very little one — with which he had 
started, and it was no use making pretences with her : very few 
women are so considerate with men as to help them along with 
their little pretences. 

I mean, how are you going to live ?” 

“ Like the sparrows, I suppose — somehow.” 

“ Sparrows don’t belong to clubs, and haven’t a taste for 
claret, and don’t pay a hundred and twenty pounds a year for 
rent. Now, I’m not going to let you take any of their money 
from the girls — they’ve got little enough. Lord knows.” 

“ I do not propose to rob my sisters, Alicia.” 

“ Then you will be wanting money very badly indeed before 
long. Besides, you never will make any by honest work. You 
can’t paint. Jack, that is the truth, and you never will be able. 
What is the use of deceiving yourself ? I didn’t live eight years 
with my poor old man without learning something about pict- 
ures. Look here, now.” She took up one of the small portraits 
on the mantelshelf. “ Here’s a thing ! Yours, of course. Here’s 
flesh — like putty ! The eyes are not straight, and there’s no 
more feeling about the lips than — well — and the worst of it is, 
you’ll never learn. My old man wouldn’t have given you half a 
crown for such a thing. No, you’ll never learn, for your only 
chance is to begin at the bottom of the ladder, where everybody 
must begin. But you’re too conceited for that. Oh ! you’re a 
genius, I know, and painting comes by nature, we all know that.” 

J ack reddened with anger. But he answered mildly, because for 
many reasons he could not quarrel with this plain-speaking lady. 

“ Really, Alicia, you carry the license of old friendship too far.” 

Not a bit too far, Jack. It does you good to hear the truth. 


88 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Who was this girl whose head you’ve got here ? I seem to know 
her face. Some model, I suppose. She sat to you and you paid 
her a few francs, and now you’ve stuck her over your mantel- 
piece for your friends to see, and you pretend she was in love 
with you, and you brag about your conquests — ” A cruelly 
truthful woman, because that was just exactly what Jack had 
done. Men like Jack Conyers always do this kind of thing. 
“ Pretty conquests !” 

“ Did you come here, Alicia, on purpose to insult and wound me ?” 

“ Not on purpose. But I certainly came to have it out with 
you.” 

She sat down, as if to contemplate the situation. 

“ Patience has limits. Jack, I warn you. It may seem to you 
easy as well as honorable to look out for a better match in soci- 
ety, and to throw me over if you succeed. Well, I don’t think 
you will succeed. For you see, not many ladies, old or young, 
in society have got two thousand a year. And what have you 
got to offer them in exchange for their money, because they are 
not likely to give themselves away for nothing ? If you haven’t 
got fortune or family or brains, what have you got ? Pretence 
— pretence of genius — sham and pretence. It’s too thin. Jack. 
It won’t stand washing. Besides, things will have to come out. 
Fancy your having to confess the little facts you have put away 
so carefully ! Nobody in society cares where you come from so 
long as you can behave yourself and amuse people. All they 
want is to be amused ; but when it comes to marrying, questions 
will be asked, my dear boy — will have to be answered, too. 
Don’t look so savage. Jack. Your father wasn’t much, was he? 
And mine wasn’t in a very lofty social position, was he ? And 
my poor dear old man made his business in the picture-dealing 
line, didn’t he ? But then, you see, I don’t pretend.” 

“ I suppose it is not a crime to desire social position,” said 
the young man, humbly. “ I did not say I was trying to marry 
anybody. Can’t I desire social position and success in my art ?” 

“ Desire away, Jack ; desire as much as you like. But how, 
meanwhile, I ask again, are you going to live ? And how long 
do you think I shall let you play fast and loose with me ? This 
kind of thing will not continue forever.” 

Jack murmured that he had no wish at all to play fast and 
loose with her. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


89 


“ Look here, then,” she said, “ I will meet you half-way. I 
will give you the rest of the summer. Have your fling ; have 
your shy at an heiress. The season is nearly over. I won’t 
give you longer than the summer. Then you must come hack 
to me for good or not at all.” 

Jack made no reply. I think, however, that in his heart he 
was grateful both for the length of the rope and the chance at 
the end of it. 

“ I know exactly what kind of life you desire. Your name 
sounds good, and you want to be thought of a good old family. 
You could hide the family shop, because the name wasn’t over 
the door, and you lived at Stockwell. You want to be thought 
a man of great refinement, and you want to be thought a genius.” 

“You can say what you like in these rooms, Alicia.” 

“I know I can. You also want all the solid comforts. As 
for them, I can give them to you ; and some of the other things 
as well. You shall pretend to be a genius, if you like — I’m 
sure I don’t care what you pretend. I’ll give you an allowance 
to keep up appearances with — as for its extent, that will depend 
on your behavior — yes” — for Jack’s face showed a disposition 
to be restive — “married women’s property is their own nowa- 
days, remember.” 

“ Oh, keep your property.” 

“ You shouldn’t have made love to me. Jack, a year ago, unless 
you intended to hear the truth.” 

“You certainly make the^most of your privilege.” 

“ Oh, Jack, you have always been such a tremendous hum- 
bug. You were a humbug when you were a boy and used to 
brag about the great things you meant to do, and all the time 
the other boys walking past you easily. Then,' you must be- 
come a gentleman, and must needs go to Cambridge and spend 
most of your little fortune there, pretending all the time that 
your father wasn’t — ” 

“ That is quite enough, Alicia !” 

“ Why, Jack, weren’t the two shops side by side, your father’s 
and mine ? And didn’t we go to church together? And didn’t 
we go to the theatre together ? And didn’t you tell me every- 
thing ? Why shouldn’t we speak plain, you and me ? When I 
married my poor dear old man, didn’t I promise and vow that 
you and me should continue friends ? You, a great man ! You, 


90 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


a great genius ! Oh, no ! But you can look the part, and that is 
something, isn’t it ? Good-bye, my dear hoy. I don’t like you 
so well as when you were a boy and made us laugh with your 
conceit, being always as conceited as Old Nick. Come and have 
dinner with me to-night. I won’t interfere with your heiress- 
hunting. Nobody but yourself, and a bottle of the poor old man’s 
best claret. Good-bye, Jack. Dinner at half-past six sharp.” 

She lingered a moment and looked at the three portraits 
again. Then she burst into a loud laugh, natural, long, and 
hearty : “ Don Juan ! Conqueror of hearts ! Oh, we poor 
women, how he makes our hearts bleed ! I thought I knew the 
face. Why, I know them all three now. And, Jack, it is really 
too thin. Every picture-dealer knows them. I’ve got ’em all 
at home. This one is a Frenchwoman, and sits in Paris. She’s 
been Cleopatra and Ninon Longclothes, and anything else you 
please ; and this is an Italian creature who’s Venus coming out 
of the sea or a Nymph bathing — we’ve got her in both charac- 
ters on the staircase wall. The Venus was put up at a hundred, 
but my old man never got his price. And the third sits for a 
Spanish girl, with a guitar, you know — which is stale business 
now — peeping behind a lattice or kneeling in church. Oh, 
Jack, Jack, what a terrible humbug you are !” 


CHAPTER IX. 

SAM. 

There remained Sam. 

After the embarrassments already twice caused by the intro- 
duction of the Duplicated Polly, Claude thought it would be 
best to explain beforehand. He did this, therefore, by letter, 
and invited her brother to meet the doubtful sister in his own 
chambers on the Sunday morning. 

Sam accepted, but without enthusiasm. He already had one 
sister of whom he was ashamed, because she remained in pov- 
erty. Very likely the other would be just like her and an ad- 
ditional clog on his own respectability. Sam was one of that nu- 
merous tribe which dislikes the family clog. Claude, in his letter, 
spoke of the new sister as a young lady, but then the word lady 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


91 


in these days of equality covers so wide an area. This is quite 
right, because why should a title so gracious and beautiful be 
limited to the House of Peers and the narrow class of Armigeri ? 

Yet everybody must not use it. It has still a distinctive 
meaning ; it has a lower limit, except in the mind of the om- 
nibus conductor, who employs it as a synonym for madam. 
Melenda, for instance, was below that limit. She could be 
properly described as a young girl, which is the general name 
for the workwoman in youth, but no one would think of calling 
her a young lady. One who is employed in a shop ; one who 
has been called to the inner bar ; one who is in the ballet ; one 
who is in the front with the playbills, may be a young lady ; 
but not a workgirl. Sam very naturally concluded that his 
other sister — the young lady — would be following such occupa- 
tion, and he saw no reason for joy at the new addition to the 
family circle. But he was not unkind. It was only natural, 
after all, that Polly, on returning to the family circle, should 
wish to see the brother who had so greatly distinguished him- 
self. The fame and rumor of his own rise had, no doubt, 
reached her wondering ears ; a man’s relations only really begin 
to rally round him when he has shown how strong and tough 
and brave he is. Sam promised, therefore, to give up a portion 
of his Sunday morning to family affection. He kept that prom- 
ise, and when he arrived in King’s Bench Walk he found the 
girls waiting for him. 

He was not, however, prepared for the sight of two young 
ladies the like of whom he had never before encountered, 
either for appearance, or for dress, or for manners. They do 
not make girls, at least not many girls, after this pattern in Hag- 
gerston, where Sam’s school is situated. 

“ One of these young ladies, Sam,” said Claude, “ is your 
sister, but, as I have already told you, we do not know which.” 

Sam looked from one to the other, reddening and confused. 
Their eyes did not say, “ Is this the great and distinguished 
Sam ?” Not at all. Their expression conveyed another ques- 
tion, which he was quite sharp enough to read, namely, “ What 
will Sam be like ?” One after the other gave him her hand, 
which Sam accepted with a pump-handle movement, saying to 
each, “ How de do ?” just as if they had met after only a week’s ab- 
sence. Then he recovered, in some sort, the sense of himself and 


92 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


his own greatness, and he thought of the awe which he was doubt- 
less inspiring, though the girls concealed it. Yet he was fain to 
mop his face with a pocket-handkerchief, and he said it was a 
hot morning, and in his agitation he dropped the aspirate, about 
which he was sensitive, because his own was the only aspirate 
to be found in all Haggerston except in church, and he mopped 
his face again. Then he found a chair and sat down. In this 
position he immediately rallied and stuck his thumbs into his 
waistcoat armholes. This is not the most graceful attitude pos- 
sible for a man, but it suited Sam better than some others would 
have done. He could not, for instance, stand, like Claude, with 
no support or background ; nor could he lean gracefully over a 
mantelshelf. He wanted an attitude which should convey a 
sense of strength and of complete self-satisfaction. 

“ You don’t know which is Polly, Claude ?” he asked, looking 
from one to the other as if they had been a pair of lay figures. 
“ Well, I’m sure I can’t remember. Never mind, my dears,” he 
added, with a reassuring nod, “ I’ll call you both my sisters.” 

Claude had used almost the same words, but somehow the 
effect produced was different. Violet turned away her eyes and 
Valentine gravely inclined her head. 

Sam, as regards the outer man, which people insist on taking 
in evidence as regards the unseen soul, was stout and strongly 
built, with square shoulders. He was under the middle height, 
and his legs, if one must speak the truth, were short and curly. 
This is considered to be a sign of strength, though it is in the 
line of beauty in the wrong place. His face as well as his legs 
showed strength : his forehead was broad and square ; his sharp 
eyes were set back under thick red eyebrows ; his coarse red 
hair rose from his forehead like a cliff ; , his nose, if short, was 
also broad ; his mouth was firm, and his chin square. Never 
was there a stronger or more determined-looking young man. 
Never, certainly, if attitude and expression go for anything, was 
a young man more self-sufficient. 

“You heard, of course,” he said, amiably, “how your brother 
had got on in the world, and then you naturally wanted to see him. 
Well, here I am. Only don’t look to me for a shove up. Every- 
body for himself, I say.” 

“ We will not ask any one for a ‘ shove up,’ ” said Violet, 
“ even though we do belong to the poor.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


93 


“The poor?” Sam started in his chair and turned red. 
“ What do you mean by the poor? You belong to the working 
class, not the poor. The poor ? Why, you are the great back- 
bone of the country.” 

“ Am I ?” Violet replied. “ Then if all the country has to 
depend upon — ” 

“ The mainstay and support of the nation,” Sam continued. 
“ Don’t let me hear you call the working class the poor again. 
One would think you came out of the Union.” 

I am told that people in very high place are positively igno- 
rant of rank in the middle class, and actually regard the general 
practitioner’s lady as of no higher position than the -wife of the 
leading draper, and the vicar’s young ladies as occupying the 
same level as the auctioneer’s daughters. In the same way it 
is difficult to understand that there is rank and position among 
working people ; so that before one gets to the poor, properly so 
called, one has to go very far down. They are, in fact, like the 
rich, who continually recede the more one advances, so that one be- 
gins to suspect that there are no rich left in this realm of England. 

“Very likely I did come out of the Union,” Violet replied, 
desperately. Was there no graciousness among the Monument 
family ? “ Why should we not come out of the Union ?” 

“ As for that,” Sam continued, “ I suppose you know nothing 
about your own family. I always said it was folly letting a girl 
be brought up by her natural enemies.” 

“ Why,” asked Valentine — “ why her natural enemies ?” 

“ Of course, you know nothing. Who are the enemies of the 
working-man unless it’s the people who live upon him ? Answer 
me that. What have your friends done for their living — eh ? 
Answer me that.” He became suddenly quite fierce, and looked 
exactly like Melenda. His eyes glowed like hers, and he turned 
upon Valentine almost wrathfully. “ Of course you’ve been 
taught to look down upon the working classes and call them the 
poor, and that you must be good to the poor. Why, look at 
the way you’re dressed ! Should a decent working-man’s sister 
go about with gold chains and silk frocks and kid gloves ?” 

“You see, Val,” said Violet to Valentine, “Joe told us the 
same thing. We shall both have to dress like Melenda.” 

“ Joe isn’t a fool,” said Sam, “ though he’s ignorant.” 

“ Pray tell us all the faults you have to find with us,” said 

G 


94 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Valentine. “ If we know what they are, we may correct them. 
We have certainly been taught kindness to poor people, and we 
have not been taught to despise working-men. But go on.” 

“ I don’t want to find fault with you,” Sam replied, more 
gently, “ only for luxury and laziness and living on other peo- 
ple’s labor.” 

“ You read about the luxury and laziness in your papers, my 
brother,” said Claude. He had been standing in the window 
looking on without remark. “Always verify your facts, Sam. 
I am sure you will not object to that rule. Ask them what they 
have learned. You will find that their record of work is as 
good, perhaps, as your own.” 

“Yes, I know. Learning to play music and to read French 
and paint and make pretty things and to dress up fine. Well, 
I don’t say it is your faults. You can’t help it. I hear you’ve 
been to see my mother, and you’ve set her back up ; and you’ve 
seen Joe, and he wants to know what it means, and what you’re 
going to do — whichever of you it is — for a living when her 
ladyship is tired of you. And you’ve seen Melenda, and she 
flew out, being driven most out of her wits by hard work and 
being always hungry. And now you’ve seen me.” 

“Yes,” said Violet. This young lady really could convey 
more meaning in a single word than others can in fifty. “ Yes.” 

Claude’s eyes brightened and Valentine looked anxious. But 
Sam observed nothing. Half tones were in fact lost upon him. 

“Yes, now you’ve seen me. All the rest of them are proud 
of me, and I’m proud of myself.” 

“ I dare say,” said Valentine, because Violet smiled, which 
might be considered an aggressive movement. *“ I dare say we 
shall be proud of you as we are of Claude when we know you.” 

“ Of Claude ?” Sam snorted, and drew his feet under his chair. 
“ As proud as you are of Claude ? Why, do you know what I 
am?” He swelled out his chest and squared his elbows. “Do 
you know what I am ? I’m the master of a board school. Do 
you know what that means ?” 

“ Sam has every reason to be proud,” said Claude. “ When 
he was only a boy he resolved on making himself a master in a 
school, and he has done it. He taught himself mostly ; I have 
been taught.” 

Sam then proceeded to give a short sketch of his own prog- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


95 


ress, showing how he had scaled Alps, levelled great rocks, 
crossed mighty floods, in his single-handed struggle. The story 
lost nothing by being told by the hero. Few stories do, which 
you may prove by referring to the pages of any contemporary 
biography. “And for the future,” he concluded, “remember 
that you will have to deal with the schoolmaster. The working- 
men are the masters of the country, and we are the masters of 
the working-men. They are looking to us already. We are 
going to be their leaders.” 

“ The House of Commons,” said Claude, “ will shortly be 
composed entirely of elementary schoolmasters.” 

“ As soon as members are paid,” Sam replied, “ there will be 
a good many. And the more the better. The time has come 
when you must have men in the House who know something — 
not Latin and Greek, mind, but something useful. What geog- 
raphy do they know, now ? Nothing at all. With English pos- 
sessions and colonies all over the world, the members know 
nothing of geography. There isn’t a sixth standard boy who 
wouldn’t be ashamed of the way they talk and the blunders they 
make. What do they know about trade and manufactures? 
Nothing. What do they know about the working-man ? Noth- 
ing. As for us, we do know him.” 

“ Do you influence him much ?” asked Violet, innocently, so that 
I do not know what it was that made Valentine look alarmed. 

“ Not so much as we would. They won’t let us teach him 
the truth at school. The code won’t let us — they know very 
well why. We’ve got to waste the time teaching him things 
that will never be any use to him, such as spelling. What’s the 
good of spelling to a man who never writes ? And if you do 
write, what’s the odds to a working-man whether he spells right 
or wrong? But we must not teach the rights of humanity. We 
mustn’t tell the boys anything about them. It would be diffi- 
cult to examine for a grant in the Rights of Man, wouldn’t 
it ? and dangerous for some of the committee of council. But 
we know what the working-men want and what they mean to 
have.” 

“Tell us, what do they mean to have ?” said Valentine. 

“ What’s the use ?” It was curious to mark how Sam’s rug- 
ged face leaped suddenly into rage and even ferocity, and then 
as suddenly dropped into gentleness. He was quite gentle now, 


96 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


as he answered, looking with a sort of pity upon a creature so 
beautiful, so dainty, and so unfit for the stern realities of life. 

“ What’s the use ?” he said. “ You are a young lady now 
and you belong to our enemies. AVhat’s the use of frightening 
you ? Go home and enjoy yourself and eat and drink.” 

“ But tell us,” she persisted. 

“ I think we had better go home — and eat and drink,” said 
Violet. 

“ Sam thinks his own opinions are those of all the working- 
men,” said Claude. “It is not unusual when people think 
strongly. Tell them your opinions, Sam.” 

“ They are not my opinions only,” said Sam ; “ don’t think 
it. Well, if you ain’t afraid, I am going to tell you just exactly 
what we mean to do — I and my friends — with you and your 
friends. You^don’t know and you don’t suspect; it’s just the 
same ignorance that was in France before the Revolution. One 
or two suspected what was coming, but most thought every- 
thing was going on forever just the same. Very well. Don’t 
you girls go away and say afterwards that you were left in igno- 
rance. Go home and tell your friends that the working-men 
of this country are going to have a republic at last ; not what 
your friends think and call a republic, but the real thing. In a 
real republic every man must be equal, so we shall of course 
abolish the lords and all titles and privileged classes. As for 
the land, it belongs to the people ; so we shall take the. land and 
it shall be cultivated for the nation. And if anybody wants to 
be a priest, he may, if he likes, after his day’s work ; for of 
course we shall disestablish the Church and take over church 
property of all the churches for the good of the State. There 
shall be in our republic no lazy parsons and ministers living 
on the people ; and there shall be no lawyers, because there will 
be free justice, and every man may have his case heard for 
nothing by a jury, and juries will sit every day if they are 
wanted. There will be no masters, employers, or capitalists, 
but equal wages for all and the same hours of work, with extra 
rations for those who have got children to support. There will 
be free education ; there will be no idlers ; everybody will be a 
working-man. We shall take over all the railways, abolish the 
national debt and the local debts. There will be no tradesmen, 
because the state — that is, the people — will keep the stores and 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


97 


distribute food and clothing. There will be no rates or taxes, 
because there will be no money, and labor will be the only coin, 
and everybody will pay his share by his own labor. There will 
be annual parliaments sitting every day all the year round, and 
nobody allowed to speak for more than five minutes. There 
will be, of course, manhood suffrage.” 

‘‘ Will women vote ?” asked Violet. 

“ Certainly not,” Sam replied, with decision. “Women can’t 
govern. Besides, they can’t be trusted to work for the public 
good. They would want private property restored, and they’d set 
up a Church and try to fix things so that their own sons should 
have nothing to do. Women haven’t got any sense of justice.” 

“ Delightful,” said Violet. “ I was afraid I might be called 
upon to assist in governing.” 

“ Pray go on,” said Valentine. 

“ There will be plenty for all and no luxury. There will be 
no saving money, because there will be no money to save, and 
everybody will have to work, whether he likes it or not, until he is 
sixty, and then he will be maintained by the state. All buying 
and selling will be in the hands of the state. The great houses 
will be turned into museums ; the private parks will be either 
cultivated or turned into public gardens. Now, do you begin 
to understand ?” 

“I think I do,” said Valentine. “When is all this to be 
begun ?” 

“ I don’t know. Perhaps in a year or two — perhaps in ten 
years. We are educating the people. We shall try to keep 
back those who want to act at once until everybody has been 
taught our principles.” 

“ Sam is a Socialist,” Claude explained. “ I ought to have told 
you that before you came.” 

“ Why, listen to this.” Sam was thoroughly roused by this 
time. “ Here are facts for you. Claude can’t deny this.” He 
sprang to his feet, and stood over Valentine with fiaming eyes, 
breathing like a bull, and hammering his facts into the palm of 
his left hand with the most determined forefinger ever seen. 
“ Look at this,” Here followed an avalanche of facts. “ What, 
I say, Dave the capitalist and the landlord done that they should 
get seventy per cent, of the working-man’s harvest ? When our 
men are in they will get the whole for themselves. Talk of 
5 


98 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


compensation ! Do you compensate a pickpocket when you 
take the purse out of his hands? Vested rights? Rights of 
robbery. We shall take all — lands, houses, wealth, and all — 
and we shall give them to the people, to whom they belong.” 

By this time the indignation of the prophet had touched his 
lips with fire, and he went on to arraign the class of those who 
have great possessions with extraordinary vehemence and pas- 
sion, and prophesied their overthrow, like another Ezekiel. Vio- 
let looked on and wondered, thinking how very much he resem- 
bled Melenda. Valentine looked on and wondered, because up 
to that time she had only heard vaguely of the extreme wicked- 
ness of the wealthy class, and because she could not understand 
at all how they were so wicked, or why they were going to be 
so dreadfully punished, or what this new world of the Socialist 
would be like. She was reassured by the attitude of Claude, 
who still stood at the window gravely listening, but without the 
least assent in his face or emotion in his grave eyes. 

“And now you know,” Sam concluded, “something of what 
is coming, not in this country only, but everywhere. Oh, yes, 
in the United States, which they pretend to be a land of free- 
dom, and iCs a worse country for the working-man than this, 
even. Perhaps it will come there first ; and in France, which 
they pretend to be a republic — a fine republic ! — and in Germa- 
ny and Russia, where they don^t pretend to anything but despot- 
ism, kept up with millions of bayonets for the luxury of the priv- 
ileged class. Then there shall be no more riches and no more 
poverty, no more rich and no more poor, no more luxury and no 
more starvation. If you are wise you will come over to us at 
once.” He seized Valentine’s hand and held it tightly. “ Come 
out of it, I say, before the house falls down about your ears. 
Some declare that it is going to be a bloodless revolution, but I 
know better. There is too much to lose — money and rank and 
state and the easy life. Oh, yes — the easy life. They won’t 
give these things up without a fight ; they will fight to the death 
to defend their possessions. They will have all the shopkeepers 
and the merchants and the professional people on their side, and 
at first they will have the soldiers. It will be the working-man 
against the world: -It will be a great and terrible struggle. 
There can be no revolution — it isn’t in the nature of things — 
without fighting and rivers of blood. Come over to us, you two* 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


99 


1 don’t care wMcli of you is iny sister ; you may both call your* 
selves Polly if you like, and I’ll stand by you both. But leave 
Claude and leave your friends and come over to us.” 

“How shall we live if we do?” asked Valentine. 

“ We will find something for you. Not button-holes to sew, 
like Melenda’s work, but something that a decent girl can do. 
You’ve been educated, I suppose, in your finicking way. You 
know something besides looking pretty and putting on fine 
clothes. Perhaps it’s not too late for board-«chool teaching, if 
you’re clever enough. You are the one for school work” — he 
indicated Valentine ; “ you wouldn’t be afraid, and you are 
strong. As for you — ” 

“ What could I do ?” asked Violet. 

“ I don’t know. You don’t look fit for much. Well, every 
girl can sew, if you come to the worst. But, there ; you’ve 
heard what is coming — the greatest revolution that the world 
has ever seen, and the people to the front with a rush. When 
that rush begins — ” 

“ A good many will be carried off their legs,” said Claude. 

Sam made no reply. He had worked himself up to the red- 
hot pitch, and was now cooling down. He was a little ashamed, 
too, because Claude remained unmoved. As for the girls, he 
had certainly succeeded in animating one with his dream of the 
people, and frightening the other by his vehemence. But he 
cared nothing for that ; anybody can work upon the emotions 
of women. But Claude, who ought to have argued with him or 
confessed himself conquered, listened without the least sign of 
being moved. Yet he listened with attention, as if he had not 
heard it all a dozen times before. He could not complain that 
he had not heard the Socialist’s arguments. 

Sam went away. The courts of the Temple were deserted. 
He thought of the coming millennium, when there should be no 
lawyers at all, but justice should be free. As these courts were 
on that Sunday morning, so should they be every morning, in 
the glorious future of the Socialist, empty and untrodden, ex- 
cept by the feet of the children playing in their gardens. No 
more lawyers ! He had no personal experience of lawyers, but 
yet his heart glowed within him at the prospect of their sup- 
pression. He passed under the cloisters beside the old church. 
Through the open doors he heard the rolling of the organ and 


100 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


tlie sweet, pure voice of a boy who was singing a solo part in an 
anthem of prayer and praise. The very sweetness of the music 
irritated him, but he consoled himself with the thought that re- 
ligion would shortly be entirely abolished, and that the sensitive 
ears of such thinkers as himself should no longer be annoyed 
with the singing of hymns. The Templars’ church would be as 
empty and as deserted as the chambers and courts without. He 
passed into Fleet Street. All the shops were closed. Why, so 
it should be every morning and all the year round as soon as 
his friends were in power. Not a single shop should be left. 
No more trade, no more masters, no more buying and selling for 
profit. So, well satisfied with the prospect, Sam went his way. 

In the evening there was to be a great social gathering of a 
certain branch of the Democratic Federation Union, at which 
some of the members were going to perform a play, and others 
were to sing and recite, and he himself was to address the meet- 
ing. It was going to be an occasion of some importance, and 
Sam was only sorry that he had not invited the two girls to be 
present. The evening would have opened their eyes. And 
though Sam professed to despise women, and was in no hurry 
to hamper himself by marriage, he did very well understand 
that the adhesion of two such pretty and well-dressed girls to 
the cause, which is at present sadly to seek in the matter of 
young ladies, would greatly stimulate waverers and bring enthu- 
siasm into the ranks. There is no leader in the world like a 
girl, if one can be found capable and courageous ; but such a 
girl is rare. 

“ You have heard Sam’s creed,” said Claude ; “ he believes it, 
every word.” 

“ After all,” said Violet, “ I can sew. Girls can do so much.” 

“ And I,” said Valentine, “ can teach after my finicking edu- 
cation. But, Claude, a world with no poverty and no suffer- 
ing—” 

“ Come,” said Violet, “ you must not even talk of it, Val dear, 
or we shall have you going over to the Socialists. Let us remain 
with our natural enemies, and eat and drink as much as we pos- 
sibly can before we are drowned in Sam’s rivers of blood. Claude, 
you will come to luncheon with us, won’t you ?” She heaved 
a deep sigh, which expressed some hidden emotion. “ We have 
now seen Sam. He lives a long way off, does he not? We 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


101 


shall see him again, perhaps, when he is President of the Social- 
ist Republic, and chopping off everybody’s head with tremen- 
dous energy.” 


CHAPTER X. 

THE GREAT RENUNCIATION. 

Blessed above^ their fellows are those who can find relief for 
an overcharged mind by drawing — I do not mean the sweet 
copying of flower, fern, and tall grass, but the drawing of faces, 
heads, and figures, so that in times of oppression and affliction 
one can caricature one’s enemy by representing him as a fool, 
an ass, a beast, a fox, or a serpent. This is the reason why the 
London School Board has thoughtfully introduced drawing into 
the schools, so that workgirls shall be enabled, in their after-life, 
to find some relief and consolation. In the rare times of joy, 
in the same way, the multiplication of one’s friends’ portraits 
increases one’s delight, and in times of doubt one can prevent 
the subject from harassing the mind by drawing likenesses of 
the personages concerned. Thus it was highly disagreeable to 
Violet to think of Joe, with his grimy hands and smeared face 
and working-man’s garb, as perhaps her brother. It was equally 
disagreeable for her to think that he was, perhaps, Valentine’s 
brother. She drew him, therefore, in various positions, all more 
or less ridiculous, but especially that when he sat upon the table 
and grinned. This greatly relieved her soul. In the same way 
Sam, who was to her a much more objectionable character, lost 
half his terrors when she had drawn him triumphantly seated in 
the revolutionary car of Juggernaut, or flourishing with zeal an 
executioner’s axe, or calmly cutting off heads so as to make ev- 
erybody the same size. But she could not draw Melenda. There 
are limits even to this artistic method of consolation. 

Valentine had no such relief. Like Saul, in his trouble, she 
turned to music for consolation, but found little. Joe and Rhoda 
and the blind old lady and Sam were nothing. As connections 
they were not, it is true, gentlefolk, but they were such as any 
one might possess without either shame or pride. Nobody in 
these days really thinks — though they may pretend — any the 


102 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


better or any the worse of a man for having brothers and cous- 
ins who are carpenters or counts, baronets or bakers, Comtists 
or Baptists, Socialists or Red Republicans, Mormons or Method- 
ists, because a man can no longer, as in the good old days, ac- 
quire fame or notoriety or disgrace by professing any trade or 
holding any form of belief whatever, unless, indeed, one were 
to go round with detonators and boxes of whitish paste, and 
profess himself a practical dynamiter. Sam was a very possi- 
ble brother, and interesting in his self-sufficiency, his conceit, 
and his extreme views of politics. But, besides Sam and Joe, 
there was Melenda. For nearly a week Valentine went about 
with a grisly spectre always before her eyes — the spectre of the 
workgirl, half-starved, overworked, resigned, in a rage, uncom- 
plaining. When Sam proclaimed his gospel of universal plenty 
she thought of the happy change it would work for Melenda 
and her friends ; when she sat at dinner she thought of Melen- 
da’s cold tea with bread-and-butter ; when she went to her own 
chamber at night she saw before her those three girls crouching 
together on their miserable bed in the wretched room ; always, 
day and night, there was present in her mind that little group 
of sewing-girls ; always the hollow eyes of one gazed reproach- 
fully at her from the bed, saying, “ Why will you still torment 
me so ? What have I done ?” and the large, heavy eyes of the 
other raised in wonder that all women were not as she herself, 
the uncared-for slave of manufacturers, born to be expended in 
toil ; and the fierce eyes of the third girl asking her how she 
dared, in the insolence of her own luxury and happiness, to 
mock the misery of her sister. 

And then she made up a scheme. No one but Violet knew 
of it, and when Valentine opened up the subject she first laughed 
at it and then cried over it. Gautama himself did not devise a 
more complete thing, so far as it went. No self -tormentor in 
Egyptian Laura or Syrian desert or Galilean cave ever proposed 
for himself a thing of greater discomfort. 

And then she told Claude. 

“ It is impossible,” he said at once, without the least hesita- 
tion. Every really great scheme is always declared impossible 
until it has been carried out, when it is perceived to have been 
a perfectly easy thing, and nothing to brag about. Anybody 
might have done it. 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


108 


“ Oh, Claude !” her face fell ; “ and I looked forward so confi- 
dently to your help.” 

“ Let us find some other way for you.” 

“ There can he no other way. Don’t you see, Claude ? There 
is my own sister — my sister and yours. Think how she is liv- 
ing ; think of her miserable days. I must go and stay with her. 
I must help her. I dare say she will try to drive me away. 
Very well. I will not be driven away.” 

“ But it is impossible, Valentine, You don’t know what it is 
you propose to do.” 

The diflSculties were, in fact, enormous. But many enormous 
difficulties, when faced, turn out to be like the lions which faced 
Christian with angry roar, and so much terrified that greatly 
tried pilgrim. The lions are chained, and can do no harm. Or 
they turn out to be mere goblins, like those gruesome and shape- 
less and nameless things which whispered horrible suggestions 
into the pilgrim’s ear when he was nervously staggering along 
that valley. 

“ It is quite impossible, Valentine,” Claude repeated. “ It 
would kill you. Their life is not yours.” 

“ I will make it mine. Oh, Claude ! I thought I should have 
had your sympathy, at least.” 

The tears stood in her eyes. All night long she had been lying 
awake filled and possessed by the thought. In the morning it 
only showed fairer and more beautiful than in the night. 

“ They are my own people, Claude.” 

“ I do not know that. Besides, how are you to live among 
them ? Will you stay with my brother Joe ? or with my moth- 
er ? or with Sam ?” 

Neither. I intend to live with Melenda, or at least as close 
to her as can be managed. Where she lives I can live.” 

“ But you have seen that Melenda lives in the very poorest 
way possible. Why, from a single visit it is impossible even to 
realize how poor and squalid is her life. Things that she does 
not mind at all would be simply intolerable to you.” 

“ No, Claude. Whatever Melenda endures I can endure.” 

Claude shook his head. 

“ And then the place and the people and the language, and 
the drunkenness ; oh, Valentine, it is quite — quite impossible.” 

“ Think less of the difficulties and more of what I could do 


104 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


for our sister, Claude — she is our sister, you know — if I went 
and lived with her. Sit down and think about that. Think a 
little, Claude.” 

Claude sat down to think, and Valentine had recourse to white 
witchcraft. 

Every woman — fortunately very few women fully realize this 
great truth — can do with every man whatever she pleases, pro- 
vided, first, that she is young and beautiful ; next, that the man 
is a man of imagination and possessed of a right feeling for the 
sex ; and, thirdly, that she has the mastery over some musical 
instrument. All these conditions were satisfied in the case of 
Claude and Valentine. 

Then Valentine began to play. First she played a solemn 
march, with full, strong chords — a march full of hope and high 
resolve — and she watched Claude furtively. Presently the music 
entered into his soul, and he was fain to rise and to walk about 
the room. When his step quickened and his eye brightened she 
changed the music, and began to play one of those songs which 
need no words, because, when they are played, the thoughts rise 
naturally to the level of the song and flow rhythmically, and 
great ideas take form and shape. And still she watched him. 
Then she changed the air again, and played a simple Scotch 
ditty, one of those which go straight to the heart, because they 
came originally from the heart. When she saw that his eyes 
were soft and his gaze was far away she paused abruptly in her 
playing, and he started. 

“ I will help you,” he said, ‘ if I can. I do not know what 
you will do for Melenda, but you shall try. At all events, you 
will do something for yourself.” 

That is nothing. I must think of those girls, not of myself.” 

“ But — Lady Mildred ?” 

“ Let us get everything quite ready first, and then we will go 
to her with our plan complete, and waiting for nothing but her 
consent. I think she will consent.” 

Every scheme, even the noblest, requires machinery and ser- 
vice. Every drama wants to be properly rehearsed and duly 
mounted. The mounting of the little comedy designed by Val- 
entine was carried out by Claude. It took him two or three 
days. First he went to Ivy Lane, and there, unknown to Me- 
lenda, who was sitting at work up-stairs, he ascertained certain 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


105 


facts connected with the lodgers in the house. The ground- 
floor front was occupied by an elderly gentleman of unknown 
calling, who was reported to be perfectly quiet and harmless, 
though dreadfully poor. The ground-floor back was inhabited 
by an old lady who herself assured Claude of her perfect respec- 
tability and unblemished character. If a woman’s word is not 
to be taken for so much, for what can it be taken ? As regards 
her profession, she got occasional employment in the funeral- 
furnishing line. One would not, perhaps, choose this line, but 
it is necessary to live. Her practice, this lady further explained, 
in evidence and support of her great respectability, was to “ go 
in ” when the winter approached and to come out ” for the' 
summer. In this euphemistic manner do some ladies speak of 
the Union. She was not by any means a nice-looking lady, and 
she looked as if perhaps some portions of her life had not been 
spent in honest industry. She also confessed, and denied not, 
that there were times when the possession of a little money 
tempted her to take a glass; but these occasions, she said, 
truthfully, were rare, because she seldom got the money. 

The back room up-stairs, behind Melenda’s, was occupied by 
a middle-aged single woman, a machinist who made trousers all 
day long with the help of a sewing-machine, and was in even 
direr straits than Melenda. She accepted a bribe of five shil- 
lings and the week’s rent, and vacated the room, which Claude 
proceeded to get thoroughly washed, scoured, scrubbed, and 
repaired. Then he put furniture in it, and that of a kind which 
made the collector believe that a district visitor at least was 
coming to live in Ivy Lane. All this he did without the least 
knowledge or suspicion of Melenda. 

When everything was quite ready, Valentine laid her plan be- 
fore Lady Mildred. With what eloquence she pleaded her 
cause, with what tears and entreaties, it needs not to relate. 
These may be understood. 

“ Let me go, dear,” she concluded. “ Oh, let me go. I have 
no rest for thinking of those girls — one of them my own sister. 
Let me go and live with them for a little while. I am not 
afraid of anything that may happen to me. I shall be quite 
safe among them.” 

Lady Mildred showed no surprise ; nobody is ever surprised 
in these latter days at any course which is proposed by daugh- 
5 ^ 


106 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


ters. She listened patiently, and bade her wait a day for her 
reply. 

Now whenever Lady Mildred had quite made up her mind 
about the course she would adopt, she invariably went through 
the formality of consulting her friend. Miss Bertha Colquhoun. 
In no single case did she ever adopt that’s friend’s advice, which 
was always contrary to her own opinion. Taking counsel with 
your friends, in fact, generally means getting an opportunity of 
putting your opinion into words, and of seeing how it looks. 
Much the same may be said as regards argument. 

“ Of course I knew very well,” she said, “ that something 
would happen when I brought Claude to the house and allowed 
the girls to visit his relations. I confess, however, that I am a 
little startled to find them so differently affected; for Violet is 
as much repelled by the poverty of the workgirls as Valentine 
is attracted.” 

“But of course, Mildred, even you will not actually suffer 
Valentine to go and live alone among them?” 

“ I do not know. Why not ?” 

“ Alone, Mildred ? Alone, and among those common people ? 
Your own daughter — well, perhaps your own daughter — brought 
up as Valentine has been — would you suffer her to run the 
dreadful and terrible risks of such a thing ?” 

“ What are the terrible risks ?” 

“ Violence — insult — robbery — everything.” 

“ No ; I do not fear these at all. The principal risk is that 
of learning that the world is really a very wicked place. The 
new theory about woman’s education, that she should not be 
kept in ignorance of evil any more than the boys, has a good 
deal to be said for it. Valentine will discover among these 
people that the world, which has always seemed to her so 
beautiful and so virtuous, is really full of dark places and in- 
justice.” 

“ Is that good for a girl to learn ?” 

“ Why not, since it is the truth ? Will Valentine be made 
wicked by the discovery of wickedness ? I do not think so.” 

“ And Violet ? Is she to go with her sister ?” 

“ Violet is of less courageous mould. She will remain with 
me, and we shall go away together somewhere — to Switzerland 
or the seaside.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


107 


“You would surely not go away and leave that poor girl 
alone and unprotected in the awful place she is going to ?” 

“Yes. But she will not he quite alone; there is that sew- 
ing-girl — perhaps her sister. Working-men do not generally 
insult respectable girls, I have learned, though they are thought- 
less about them. I think she will be quite safe with her sup- 
posed sister.” 

“ Well, Mildred, I do not see that any possible good can come 
of it.” 

“ Suppose,” she replied, “ a girl were to learn and understand, 
in this or some other way, some of the worst wrongs that are 
inflicted on women in this city — wrongs that can only be real- 
ized by actually sharing them or witnessing them day after 
day ; and suppose that she is a brave girl and clear-headed, as 
well as sound of heart — think, then, what this girl might be- 
come and what she might do in after-life. My dear Bertha, 
think of the things you have yourself read and cried over, but 
never really understood — I mean the ill treatment and oppres- 
sion of workgirls. Do you suppose that women could be 
treated so if we made up our minds that they should not? We 
cannot believe that the ‘ Song of the Shirt ’ would have any 
meaning left at all except an ugly memory, if the women of 
this country once resolved that it should not. It is forty years 
and more since Hood wrote that song, and word for word, tear 
for tear, I am sure that it might be written and sung again this 
very day. Valentine shall learn for herself. Let her go, and 
let her — if it must be — suffer.” 

In the morning she gave judgment. There were present at 
this family council, besides the petitioner and Claude, Violet 
and Bertha. Everybody, except Lady Mildred herself, looked, 
for some reason or other, guilty. Bertha, because she had not 
risen to the level of the situation, and still looked on the step 
proposed as impossible for a gentlewoman ; Violet, because she 
was ashamed of herself and her own shrinking from the life 
which Valentine proposed to share ; Claude, because he had 
made all the arrangements beforehand, as if it was quite cer- 
tain that consent would be obtained, and yet had made them 
secretly ; and Valentine, because she was afraid she might be 
refused. 

“ My child,” said Lady Mildred, taking both her hands, “ you 


108 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


have thought seriously and calmly over this scheme of yours? 
Have you fully considered what it may mean ? that, for instance, 
it will color your whole life, and perhaps sadden it ; that you go 
alone among people of whom you know nothing hut that they 
are rude and coarse 

“ Oh, yes,” said Valentine, “ I have thought of that. Claude 
has told me everything that will happen to me. But I feel as 
if I must do it.” 

“ I shall not deny you, Valentine.” Then she turned to 
Violet. “ And you, my child ?” 

“ No,” said Violet, “ I could not do it. I am ashamed of 
myself. I am a coward, if you please, hut I could not do it.” 
She was about to assign as the reason of her dreadful coward- 
ice her own identity with Polly and her close connection with 
the Monument family, hut she refrained. “ Valentine sees beau- 
tiful things where I see nothing hut rude manners and coarse 
speeches. I could not go to live among those people even if 
Valentine were beside me. And alone !” she shuddered. 

“You shall not be asked, my dear.” 

“ Perhaps it will not be so dreadful as it seems to us,” said 
Valentine. “ I have repeated it over and over again to myself. 
Instead of a beautiful home like this, a single room in a row of 
dingy houses ; instead of the open Park, a great nest of mean 
streets; noise instead of quiet; in place of your kind voices, 
there will be quarrels of women, cries of children, and bad 
language of men ; in the place of this sweet home — ” Here 
her voice failed her, and the tears came into her eyes, and Vio- 
let kissed her with tears of her own. 

“As for your going alone,” said Lady Mildred, “of course 
the world would disapprove, but then we need not consider 
much what the world may say. An Eastern lady, I believe, 
estimates her importance by the care taken in guarding her. 
We all come from the East, which accounts for a lingering of 
the feeling among ourselves. If we do not guard you, my Val- 
entine, the world will say that we do not care for you.” 

“ But I shall not say so.” 

“ Tell us, then, exactly, what arrangements you propose to 
make.” 

Claude explained that there was a room — not a large room 
nor a very pretty room, but a place weatherproof — on the first 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


109 


floor and at tlie back of Melenda’s room ; that be bad persuaded 
tbe tenant to give up this room to himself ; that he had caused 
it to be cleaned, scrubbed, whitewashed, and fumigated ; that 
he had furnished it; and that Valentine could take possession 
when she pleased. 

“ And all before I was consulted at all ?” said Lady Mildred. 

Claude blushed, but did not explain that Valentine had con- 
verted him to her view, and that he had done her bidding. 

“ But who is to do up your room every day ?” asked Violet. 

Claude had no proposition to make on this important subject. 
But Valentine confessed, with a blush and a sigh, because this 
was a detail less attractive than some others in her scheme, that 
she would probably have to do it for herself. 

“Yourself?” said Violet; “why, there are a thousand things 
that have to be done. Who will cook your dinner and make 
your breakfasts and everything ?” 

“ I suppose I must do all this for myself. Melenda does.” 

“ Melenda dines off cold tea and bread. She threw the fact 
at our heads, and reproached us with living on beef and mut- 
ton, and eating more than is good for us — you remember, 
dear?” 

“ I do not think I can live on tea and bread,” said Valentine ; 
“ but I shall live as simply as I can. And I do not in the least 
mind boiling a kettle for myself.” 

“ She will come back,” said Violet, “ with her hands as hard 
as a housemaid’s.” 

“Then there are the evenings. What will you do in the 
evenings ?” 

“ The days are long now. Besides, there is Melenda to cul- 
tivate.” 

“Yes,” said Violet. 

“I will not deny you, my child,” said Lady Mildred. “You 
shall have the desire of your heart. But it must be on one or 
two conditions.” 

“Any conditions.” 

“ Then, first of all, you will persist in the scheme for three 
months, even if you are lonely and unhappy, even if Melenda 
turns out more obdurate than you expected, and the life and 
companionship are far more disagreeable than you ever antici- 
pated. You must not give it up unless you fall ill.” 

H 


110 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ I accept that condition willingly,” said Valentine. “Wheth- 
er I like it or whether I do not, I will stay there for three months.” 

“ The next is that you will be completely separated from Vio- 
let and myself. We shall go quite out of your way somewhere — 
I do not yet know where — and stay out of your way all the sum- 
mer. You will see nothing of us until next October. You will 
have no letters from us, nor will you write to us. That will be 
very hard for us, my dear, will it not ?” 

“ It will be very hard for me, and yet I accept.” 

“ The next condition refers to Claude. It is that he consents 
to remain in London all the summer, and that he sees you as 
often as possible — every day if he can — so that if you fall into 
any trouble you may always feel that you have some one at 
hand.” 

“ That is a condition,” said Claude, “ which I willingly accept.” 

“ He has already promised it,” said Valentine. 

“ Then you must promise, next, that you will not try to live 
like these poor workgirls. Cold tea and dry bread is bad for 
them, but it would be far worse for you. You will live on 
something more substantial.” 

“ That is a very easy condition. I am sure I do not want to 
live on tea and bread.” 

“ I have no more conditions to make, my dear. But remem- 
ber that it is useless to take things which one cannot mend too 
much to heart. And do not give away money to people ; and 
do not believe everybody’s story ; and do not entangle yourself 
with too many friendships.” 

“ I will try not to make too many friends,” said Valentine. 

“ And do not give people credit for every virtue simply because 
they are poor and live in a single room. I dare say some of the mi- 
nor vices may be found even in this Arcadia of yours, my dear.” 

“ Only untidiness at worst,” said Violet, sarcastically ; “ there 
cannot possibly be anything more in Ivy. Lane.” 

“ Then,” said Lady Mildred, “ when will you go, my dear ?” 

“Let me go this very day, lest I get frightened and repent in 
the night.” 

Violet went with her to her own room, where she changed 
her dress and put on a plain frock of brown stuff made up for 
the purpose, a simple hat without feathers or ornaments, a gray 
ulster, and a pair of Swedish kid gloves. 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


Ill 


“ Oh, Yal,” Violet laughed, hut the tears were in her eyes, 
“you are as much like a London workgirl as a village maid in 
a comic operetta is like the real rustic. But never mind, my 
dear, you look as beautiful as the day and as good as any angel, 
and how, oh, how in the world shall I get on without you ?” 

Then, together, they packed a box with things absolutely 
necessary, and a few books, and all was ready. 

“ You can't be going !” cried Violet, clinging to her. “ Oh, 
my dear, my dear, it is always you who think and say the best 
and noblest things. It is because you are Beatrice and I am 
only Polly, and she is selfish and cannot tear herself from her 
luxurious life. But you will be the happier of the two. I shall 
think of you and be ashamed of myself every day that you are 
gone. If we were really sisters I think I could do what you 
are doing. But I am only — ” 

“ No, Violet, I am Polly, and the proof is that I am constrained 
by an irresistible force to go among my own people. Do you 
think I shall make them love me 

“ Oh, Valentine, can they help it? You will change them all. 
Sam, after a little of your society, will cease to yearn for his 
rivers of blood, and Joe will leave off grinning, and Melenda will 
become as gentle as a turtle-dove.” 


BOOK 11. 


CHAPTER I. 

“l AM YOUR SISTER.” 

It was done, then. Valentine sat alone in her hermitage — a 
single room on the first floor of a tenement-house in Ivy Lane, 
Hoxton. She was in the middle of the great town, hut she was 
as lonely and as far from the world as if it had been the Her- 
mitage on the Coquet River or a cave beside the Brook Cherith. 
She also realized with wonder how rapidly the greatest events 
in the world get themselves accomplished. Only two or three 
hours before she was torn with doubts as to whether this thing 
would ever be permitted, and lo ! it was already done — that is 
to say, it was begun, because nothing in this human world ever 
gets itself finished. 

Claude carried her box with brotherly care up the steep and 
narrow stair, and then looked around expectant, as the railway 
porter lingereth about the door of the cab. He waited, like the 
railway porter, for his tip, the meed of praise because he had 
taken no small pains. 

Tell me,” he said, “ tell me, Valentine, what you think of it.” 

“ It is very small. But then I am not very big. And you 
have made it look pretty. I expected nothing half so pretty as 
this. Thank you, Claude.” 

“ I remembered, first, a certain room in Newnham which I 
once saw. It was not much larger than this, and it was very 
daintily furnished. I hope the girl it belonged to was pretty, 
and that she got her first class. Cleverness, you know, and 
beauty and taste ought always to go together. Next I read a 
certain chapter about hermits in ‘ Hypatia.’ After that, I re- 
called the fittings of a cabin in a little yacht wherein I sailed 
last year. And then I read a few chapters of ‘ Robinson Cru- 


CHILDREN OF OIBEON. 


113 


soe ’ and of ‘ Philip Quarles.’ This carried me a long way, and 
then with just a page or two of Xavier de Maistre and the help 
of a book on a3sthetic furniture, and one visit to an artistic up- 
holsterer, I managed to furnish your room for you. This is the 
result.” 

They were both extremely grave and serious, because, now 
that the thing was begun, it looked horribly beset with perils of 
all kinds. Perhaps this was the reason why Claude talked with 
a certain show of frivolity. 

“ Thank you, Claude.” I do not know why, but her eyes be- 
came dim. 

“ Here is your tea service,” Claude began, pointing out the 
things as if it were a private museum — in fact he was almost as 
proud of them as if he were a collector — “ four cups in blue, and 
here is your dinner service. I hope you will like the pattern.” 
They were ranged on the shelves of a small ebony cabinet fixed 
on the wall over a chest of drawers: “Here are your book- 
shelves ; the leaves of the table can be let down so as to give 
you more room. I thought you would like candles better than 
oil, and I hope you will find this little reading-lamp useful. 
The view from the window is not extensive and not very nice, 
but I have put a box outside with mignonette in it. I know 
the easy-chair is comfortable, because I tried it myself. You 
will have no other looking-glass than this mirror over the man- 
telshelf. See, here is Violet’s photograph, and here is mine. 
The old fireplace was truly disgraceful. I believe that the pre- 
vious occupant, poor thing, in her extremity had eaten two of 
the bars. So I put in this. It is pretty, I think, and the tiles 
are really good. As for stores, you will find some in this cup- 
board — quite a big cupboard, isn’t it? Here are coals, but I 
fear you will find your coal supply a difficulty. This is your 
filter, and here are your cooking utensils. Try to think if there 
is anything I have forgotten, or anything else at all I can do 
for you. Shall I come every day to sit on the stairs and peel 
potatoes for you ?” 

“ No, Claude, thank you. And now you had better leave me, 
or else I am afraid I shall begin to cry. I am sure I shall not 
want anything more.” 

“ You are not — not afraid, Valentine ?” 

“ If I were I should not acknowledge it. But go, Claude. 


114 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


To-day is Thursday. Come to see me on Sunday morning— 
not before. I think I should like to be quite alone until then. 
If I am in trouble I shall make Melenda help me. Good-bye, 
Claude. It is a beautiful thing to have a brother who will take 
so much trouble for one. I am very grateful. Good-bye. Go 
apd stay with Violet this evening.” 

When the door was shut and she had wrestled with that in- 
clination to cry — sustaining for a few moments a shameful de- 
feat, but she rallied — she sat on her bed and looked about her. 
The room was certainly very small, yet Claude had made it 
pretty. The walls were of plaster, newly scraped and repaired 
and stained and made quite clean ; the ceiling was freshly white- 
washed ; the little green-and-gold iron bed was covered with a 
counterpane of pleasing design; two candlesticks stood on the 
mantelshelf, and her lamp was on a three-cornered bracket ; an 
embroidered cloth lay on the table, and there were flowers in a 
vase ; there were pretty curtains to the window, of a soft stuff, 
pleasant to look upon and to touch, and on the floor lay a rug 
large enough to serve for carpet. There were only three chairs, 
one of them an easy -chair, low, long, deep, and luxurious, in 
which one might meditate and rest ; and the fireplace was pretty, 
with its tiles and its brass fender. In the cupboard she found 
a loaf of bread, butter, a small ham — already boiled — sugar, tea, 
coffee, and other things ; and on the lowest shelf she discovered, 
and handled with some curiosity, a saucepan, a pot, a frying- 
pan, a gridiron', and a Dutch oven ; would she have to learn the 
use of all these things ? Besides the mirror over the mantel- 
shelf, Claude had hung up some fans and feathers and a little 
picture or two. It really is a beautiful thing to have a brother 
who will work for one. What servant — what army of servants 
— would have made this place so dainty and so pretty ? It is 
a thing, in fact, which cannot be done to order. And the dis- 
covery of so small a detail as a box of matches almost brought 
her to tears a second time. Claude had remembered the matches ! 
Everybody knows the dreadful carelessness of even good house- 
maids in the matter of matches. 

It certainly seemed as if life were going to become, for a time, 
a much more simple thing than she had been accustomed to 
consider it. Here she was, in a little room only twelve feet 
square, surrounded by everything necessary for existence, with 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


115 


food and drink, shelter, bed, and clothes to wear. What else 
can a reasonable being want ? In Park Lane they had one room 
for sleeping, one for eating, a third for study, and a fourth for 
society. The things to eat were not kept in the sleeping-room, 
nor were the clothes kept in the eating-room, nor was the cook- 
ing done in the room reserved for society — fancy Violet “ grid- 
dling ” a steak in the large drawing-room ! Nor was the coal 
cellar kept in a bedroom, nor was the pantry confused with the 
library. Yet here were bedroom, dining-room, drawing-room, 
library, kitchen, scullery, and coal cellar all combined in one 
small chamber which Claude had made pretty for its three- 
months’ tenant. 

She sat on the bed for a long time, thinking. Now that the 
thing was really begun, and she was alone in the house, and go- 
ing to remain alone for a long time, she felt more than a little 
afraid. Suppose that some one were to walk in at the open 
door and visit her, unasked. The house door was open all day, 
and there was nothing to prevent any curious or impertinent 
person — at the thought she sprang to her feet and examined her 
door. Oh, prudent Claude ! He had thought of this, too. He 
had provided the door with a chain, a bolt, a lock, and a wooden 
bar, which could be dropped into strong iron stanchions, capable 
of withstanding any ordinary pressure. And besides these for- 
tifications, she had Melenda close at hand, though as yet Melenda 
was ignorant of her arrival. If anything happened she could 
call out for her. Surely Melenda was fierce enough and brave 
enough for any emergency whatever. 

Quite alone ! There are many men who all their lives spend 
more than half the twenty-four hours in loneliness absolute, yet 
do not seem to mind it. Who can be more lonely, for instance, 
than the tenant of chambers, who sits in them all day working 
or waiting for clients, and all night reading or sleeping ; and 
perhaps when the clerks are gone, the only man left on the 
ghostly staircase? Yet men live on in this solitary way, some- 
times without even a club, and never complain of loneliness, and 
never seem afraid of ghosts. Not long ago there was a man 
who died at the ripe age of eighty-one, and had lived for thirty 
years all alone in a country-house, seeing no one, and not even 
admitting a woman to clean up, and Dot taking the trouble to 
clean up the place himself, so that when he died the femalo 


116 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


population, to a woman, made haste to visit the house in order 
to gaze and gloat upon the dust. Yet he was quite happy. 
Men, in fact, live alone from the time when they leave school to 
the time when they marry, which is very often a long spell. 
They have their little distractions — their clubs, their friends, 
their theatres ; but they spend most of their evenings and all 
their nights alone in their rooms. Women, on the other hand, 
seldom live alone : young women never. They are accustomed 
to go about together, to sit, work, and even study together. Val- 
entine had never been separated for a single day from Violet. 
She had never been without the sense of protection with which 
young ladies are wrapped and clothed as with a suit of armor. 
Except in her bedroom, which was next to Violet’s, she had 
never once been alone in all her life. And, needless to point 
out — though this is of minor importance — she had never done 
anything at all for herself. Now, like Tommy Merton, she was 
to discover that if she would eat she must work — that is, she 
must cook. She got up, therefore, and began to wonder if she 
could make herself some tea. Again, that most thoughtful youth 
Claude had remembered everything. The fire was laid, not with 
sticks — a slow and uncertain method unless you use a whole 
bundle, which costs a halfpenny, and is never permitted even in 
the most extravagant household — but with the resinous wheels, 
which burn fiercely and make a fine fire in two minutes. The 
kettle, she found, was filled with water ; in the cupboard was a 
caddy full of tea. There was white sugar in the sugar-basin; 
nobody knew better than Claude that brown sugar was becom- 
ing fpr Polly’s position, but he pretended to forget that detail. 
In the same way he had committed gross incongruities in the 
French bed, and the pretty lamp with the tinted shade, and the 
aesthetic table-cover. Then Valentine discovered, further, a 
saucer full of white eggs — not the “ selected ” at ten for a shil- 
ling — and two or three pots of preserves, besides the bread and 
the butter already mentioned. There was also a jug of milk. 
Where, Valentine wondered, would she get her milk for next 
day ? Then, with a solemn feeling, as if she was setting a light 
to the sacred Hearth of Vesta, or propitiating the Lares, she 
struck a match upon the magic box and set the fire-wheel crack- 
ling and blazing, and made the coals to burn merrily and to dart 
forth long tongues of flame, licking the bars and the sides of 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


117 


tlie kettle, and when the water presently began to sing, Valen- 
tine began to feel that she might find happiness even in living 
alone. 

While the kettle was singing, and before it boiled over, Val- 
entine looked out of window over her box of mignonette. The 
back of Ivy Lane at this point “ gives ” partly upon Hammond 
Square, which now consists of a board school, with its asphalted 
pavement, where the children were playing. The great red-brick 
building of the school dominates the mean houses in which it is 
placed much as a mediaeval castle used to dominate the village 
which clustered round it. There is, however, an important dis- 
tinction. The castle was on an eminence above the village ; the 
board school is on the same level with it. This fact alone is 
sufficient to prevent the board schoolmaster from becoming a 
proud baron. On the west of Hammond Square is the back of 
Hemsworth Street, and between the “backs” there are small 
yards which were once meant to be little gardens, but are in- 
nocent of flowers, though here and there stands a solitary tree, 
the melancholy survivor of the orchard, with blackened trunk 
and grimy branches. The yards are now used for the drying 
of linen, and there is always a great deal hanging out on fine 
days, so that at first one feels that Hoxton must be a very clean 
place, and therefore not far from the kingdom of heaven. But 
that is only a first suspicion, and not a first impression, for the 
wish is father to the thought. A closer inspection shows grubby 
yards, filled with rubbish, brickbats, and everywhere cats, a most 
wonderful collection of cats, sunning themselves upon the walls ; 
and all sleek, all well-fed, fat, and good-tempered, and probably 
quite certain that they are living in a picturesque country, and 
in the highest society, among ladies and gentlemen of the great- 
est refinement. Then Valentine looked across the space be- 
tween the two “ backs,” and as she had eyes stronger than most 
she could see through the open windows opposite, and could 
catch a glimpse of interiors which filled her soul with pity. 
One certainly ought, under all conditions of life, and at any 
juncture, tQ be clean and to live in clean rooms ; but this com- 
mandment has never been written. It is not, therefore, felt to 
be so binding as the others, and in time of pressure and trouble 
the enthusiasm for cleanliness is apt to decline. Few people 
have the heart to clean up when there is no work to be done, 


118 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


and no money to spend, and nothing to drink. And Valentine 
saw another thing ; not only were there back yards and grimy 
windows, but there were courts at the back with houses even 
smaller than the one in which she sat. In fact, some of them 
were only two-roomed houses, and these houses added their lit- 
tle back yards and their dirt, and, as she was to discover later on, 
their noise as well. 

Valentine left her window. And then she made her tea and 
drank a cup, with a curious sense of unreality, because Violet’s 
voice should have been in her ears ; and it was incongruous, and 
like a nightmare, that she should make her own tea for herself 
alone in her bedroom. 

After her tea she sat reading until about half-past eight, when 
the sun had set and the twilight was upon the ugly backs and 
grubby yards. And then, but with misgivings, she left her room 
and timidly knocked at- Melenda’s door. 

The girls had just finished work for the day. Melenda was 
folding it up ; Lotty was arranging herself for rest. Lizzie was 
stretching out her arms as Ixion might have done when they 
took him down from his wheel and told him he might knock 
off for the night. 

“ I have come back,” said Valentine. 

“ Oh,” replied Melenda, pretending not to be astonished. But 
the other two gasped. 

“You said that Polly might come if she came by herself. 
Are you glad to see me again now that I am alone ?” 

“ Not likely,” said Melenda, shortly. 

“ I have come to stay here. I have got a room in this very 
house.” 

Lizzie opened her great eyes wider, but Melenda, who was 
not going to be surprised by anything, only sniffed. 

“ What have you done that for ?” 

“ To be near you. We are sisters, Melenda.” 

“ The other day you didn’t know which was which. As if a 
girl could get lost. And how are you going to live ? There’s 
no service about here. There’s a young girl wanted at the pub- 
lic-house, I believe, but you must be pretty low down if you’d 
demean yourself by going there. I wouldn’t, no more, would 
Lizzie. Have you saved your money ?” 

“ I have some money for a time.” This was delicate ground, 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


119 


and she hastened to get over it quickly. Claude furnished my 
room for me. Let me show it to you.” 

“ Well,” said Melenda, ungraciously, “ I can’t help it, if you 
choose to come. You won’t stay long, I suppose. Let’s see 
the room.” 

They all three went with her, impelled by the strongest of 
feminine instincts. 

Valentine had now pulled down the blind, drawn her curtains, 
and lit the pretty reading-lamp with its colored shade. 

“ Oh — h I” the girls gasped. They had never before seen a 
pretty room, and the prettiness of this room took their breath 
away. Even Melenda, who had been prepared to admire noth- 
ing, was taken by surprise. They went round, looking at and 
examining everything, the easy -chair, the fireplace, the book- 
shelves, the table, and the pictures. 

“ See,” said Valentine, “ here is my cupboard with my stores. 
We will have dinner together if you will. Here are my books ; 
we will read together every day if you like. Here is my workbox. 
I will work with you if you will let me. I can work very well.” 

“ What’s gone of all your fine clothes and your gold chain ?” 
asked Lizzie, staring at the plain brown frock. 

“ I have not brought them here. I have only this frock and 
an ulster like your own.” Melenda laughed scornfully. 

“ It’s nothing but play-acting, Polly. Lord ! nobody would 
take you for a workgirl — you and your ulster ! Why, it isn’t 
ragged, and your elbows don’t stick through. And where’s your 
fringe ? And you’ve got a collar and cuffs : and look at your 
fingers ! I’ll just tell you what you look like — nothing but a 
lady’s-maid out o’ work.” She made this comparison in tones 
so contemptuous that for a while Valentine was confounded. 

“ I will pass for a lady’s-maid, then,” she replied, when she 
had recovered a little. “ You won’t be unkind, Melenda, will 
you ?” 

“ Melenda was examining the photographs on the mantelshelf. 
“ Here’s Claude,” she said ; “ he looks a swell, don’t he ? What’s 
he got a square thing on his head for ? And why does he wear 
a black gown ?” 

“ Claude is a great scholar. He is photographed in the cap 
and gown that scholars wear at the university. That is Violet, 
my sister.” 


120 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ That’s the other one,” said Melenda ; her that cried. She 
won’t come again, because I threatened to pull her hair off.” 
She laughed grimly. “ Looks a bit like Joe, somehow. But 
you look a bit like Claude.” 

“Will you let me sit with you, and go in and out without 
disturbing you, Melenda ?” 

It was Lotty who replied for her. 

“ Don’t ask Melenda, else you’ll only put her back up, and 
she’ll answer hasty. Come without asking.” 

“ We’re workgirls,” Melenda added, not a bit offended by this 
allusion to her temper, “ and we’ve got our work to do, and we 
can’t be chattering. If you won’t make Liz chatter and lose 
her time, you may come. Lotty likes you, if I don’t.” 

Valentine turned grateful eyes to the thin, hollow-chested girl 
with the weak back. 

“ So Claude took and furnished the room for you, did he ?” 
said Melenda. “ Where’d he get the money to spend on it ? I 
suppose you don’t mind being beholden to him, do you ?” 

“ Not a bit,” said Valentine ; “ I am glad to be grateful to 
Claude.” 

“ Humph,” Melenda grunted. “ He sha’n’t help me if I know 
it. And he came here and took the room and all — they told 
me a swell had been about the place — without seeing me or 
telling me anything about it. He’s in a rage with me, I sup- 
pose, ’cos I let out the other day.” 

“You called him names when he came. But he is not in a 
rage with you at all, I am sure.” 

“ He pretended not to mind. Why didn’t he call back then, 
instead of standing and looking as if he was looking through 
one with a bradawl? Many a man would have knocked a girl 
down for less.” 

“ Claude does not knock women down.” 

Melenda changed the subject. 

“ How are you going to cook,” she asked, “ with a finicking 
stove like that ? The water’s laid on behind, one cask for every 
two houses. You’ll have to do all your own work yourself. 
Lotty ’ll tell you how to manage, if you’ll ask her — she knows 
how to cook beautiful. You should taste her beef and onions. 
You can pay her any way you like. Her back’s awful bad 
sometimes — sit down on Polly’s bed, Lotty — and she never files 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


121 


in a rage like I should do if my hack was had. And she isn’t 
so proud as she ought to he. She’ll take things from you.” 

Melenda spoke with the superiority of health and strength, but 
Lotty hung her head. Pride, independence, and freedom were 
fine things for girls with strong backs, but she was permitted to 
be beholden to people. It was a permission of which the poor 
girl could rarely avail herself. As for Liz, she gazed about her 
with great eyes and open mouth. The room looked to her like 
a little garden of Eden, or at least like Eve’s Petit Trianon, if 
she had one in that park. 

“ I am going to have some supper,” said Valentine, pleased 
to have got on so well. “ Here is a ham that Claude gave me, 
and bread-and-butter, and we will light the fire again and make 
some cocoa, if you would like to have some.” 

The ham looked splendid when Valentine put it on the table. 
All three girls became instantly conscious of a hollow and yearning 
sensation. Lotty turned quite white, and Lizzie clutched the back 
of a chair, but Melenda flew into a rage because of the temptation. 

“ I won’t eat your ham !” she cried ; “ I won’t eat any of your 
ham ! Do you hear ? I won’t take anything from you. Lotty 
may, because she’s weak in her back. Lizzie ought to be 
ashamed — she ought — if she eats any ! I sha’n’t. I shall go out 
for a walk. I shall take and walk up and down Hoxton Street 
till I’m tired. There ! They are a nice lot in Hoxton Street of a 
night! You’ll be proud of your sister, won’t you ? If I’d got any 
money to spend I’d go to the Britannier or else to the Variety 
Music Hall, and I sha’n’t get home before midnight likely.” 

She made these announcements with defiance. They illustrat- 
ed at once her independence, her freedom of action, and her con- 
tempt of criticism. With the light of wrath in her eyes, with her 
parted lips, and the lamplight softening the effect of that lump of 
hair on her forehead, Melenda looked her very best. She might 
have been painted as an actress in a great part. But she ought 
to have been painted in a rage. She banged out of the room, 
and they heard her run down-stairs. Then she ran back again. 

“ If you sit with Lotty,” she said, while all trembled, “ or if 
Lotty sits with you, prop her up and make her comfortable. 
Don’t go to say that I don’t look after Lotty. Don’t dare to 
say that, or I’ll serve you — ” 

Her eyes fell upon the photograph of Claude in the square 
6 


122 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


cap and the gown, who seemed to he asking her, with grave 
face, if this language was becoming to a girl who respected her- 
self. She stopped, and fled. 

“ And now,” said Valentine, “ we will have some supper.” 

“ Do ladies all live in beautiful rooms like this ?” asked Lizzie, 
when that meal of fragrant cocoa with ham and bread-and-but- 
ter, served on a snow-white cloth, was finished and the things 
put away. She had not spoken a word, but looked about her all 
the time curiously and wonderingly. “ Do they all live like this ?” 

“ I suppose so,” said Valentine. “ This is a poor little room, 
but Claude has made it pretty.” 

“ And do they all have as much ham and bread-and-butter as 
they like ?” 

“ Yes, I believe they do.” 

Liz asked no more questions. But presently she rose and put 
on her ulster and hat, and went out without a word. She was 
no longer hungry : the sight of the pretty room and the dainty 
supper filled her with physical content and ease, and with a 
vague yearning that it might be always like this, and in her mind 
there echoed certain w'ords which she could not repeat to Lotty 
and Melenda. “You ought to be a lady,” said these words. 
“ You ought to live like a lady in pretty rooms, and be dressed 
beautifully, and have nothing to do but to please some one with 
your lovely eyes.” Why, she knew now what it was to be a 
lady and to live in a pretty room. She had never known be- 
fore, poor Liz 1 And it seemed an altogether desirable and a 
lovely life. She went out into the street thinking how it would 
be to have every day such a supper, to sit in such a room, to 
wear such a pretty frock, and to have put away somewhere 
beautiful dresses and gold chains. “You ought to be a lady. 
You ought to live like a lady in pretty rooms, and be dressed 
beautifully, and have nothing to do but to please some one with 
your lovely eyes.” Perhaps it was the devil who whispered 
these words in her ear continually, so that she saw nothing as she 
walked along the crowded street but the pretty room, with its 
soft-colored light, and the sweet face of its owner, and her grace- 
ful, gentle ways. “ You ought to be a lady.” If she only could ! 

When she got home at twelve, Lotty was already asleep. 
Generally the pain in her back kept her awake. But now she 
was sleeping. There was light enough for Liz to see her thin, 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


123 


pale face upon the pillow. Something — perhaps it was that — 
touched the girl’s heart. 

“ I won’t never leave Lotty,” she murmured, “ not even to be 
a lady.” 

When they were left alone, Valentine made Lotty lie down 
upon her bed and propped her up with pillows, and cooled her 
hot temples with eau de cologne. 

“ Oh,” said Lotty, “ it’s like Melenda ; hut she never had any 
scent, poor thing.” She meant that Valentine was as kind and 
thoughtful for her as her friend Melenda. “ Don’t anger her, 
miss. She’s a good sort if you take her the right way.” 

“ You mustn’t call me miss. Call me — no, call me Valentine.” 

“ Oh, hut I can’t, because you are a young lady. Well, then, 
Valentine.” 

“ Are you always left alone in the evening ?” 

“Yes, always. They must go out after the day’s work. I 
know what you think. The streets are rough. But Melenda 
won’t get into mischief. And she’s too proud to go. into puhlic- 
houses and drink with the men, as some girls do. And so’s Liz.” 

“ Melenda said you were not to talk much. Let me talk to 
you. What shall I tell you ?” 

“Tell me whatever you like. You’ve got such a soft voice. 
I told Melenda you were kind and didn’t come to laugh at us, 
though you are a lady and all.” 

“ But, my dear, ladies don’t laugh at working-girls.” 

“ Sam says they laugh at all poor people.” 

“ Sam says what is horribly untrue then. Do not believe Sam.” 

“ He was here the other day. We’d been out of work for 
three days, and Liz she’d gone to look for it at one house and 
Melenda at another, and I was lying down. Sam stamped and 
swore — he’s dreadful when his blood’s up — and he said, ‘ What 
do they care if all the workgirls in London starve ? They’re 
worse than the men who call themselves gentlemen, for they 
have listened to the workmen. They are the cruellest people in 
the world, and the hardest-hearted.’ That’s what Sam said.” 

“ Who are ?” interrupted Valentine. 

“ The women who call themselves ladies. That’s what Sam 
said ; and then he swore again, and then he went on to say that 
if there had been half the tyranny with the men as there is with 
the women, all England would have rose. And the ladies know it, 


124 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


he said, and they’ve been told day after day ; the papers, he says, 
are full of it ; they are taught about it in their poetry books, but 
they do nothing ; and Sam says they never will do nothing, so 
long as they can get their pretty things cheap, but laugh at us 
while w'e work and starve. Not that we really do starve, you 
know, because there’s always somehow been bread and cold tea, 
but sometimes there’s nothing more. That’s what Sam says.” 

“ It isn’t true, Lotty,” said Valentine. But she felt guilty, 
not of laughing, but of apathy. “ Help me to be neither cruel 
nor hard-hearted, my dear.” 

Then she was silent, thinking, and Lotty lay resting. 

Presently Valentine said : 

“ I will tell you a story, a story about myself, Lotty. Once 
upon a time there was a poor widow woman, who had a large 
family to keep, and took in washing, but she had to work very 
hard. One day there came to see her a great lady who had 
known her a long time before, and she said to the poor woman, 
‘ Give me your little girl, your youngest. I will take her away 
and bring her up with my own child, and care for her. Some 
day you shall see her again.’ The poor woman knew that her 
daughter would be kindly kept, and so she let her go, and for a 
long time saw the child no more, because she was being taught 
all kinds of things, and among others to be a young lady. This 
is not at all easy for any girl to learn, Lotty, because it means all 
kinds of things besides the wearing of fine clothes ; among oth- 
ers it means always thinking the best things and doing the no- 
blest things, so that I am afraid that girl got but a very little 
way. However, after nineteen years, she went back with her 
benefactor’s daughter to see her mother and her brothers and 
her sister, who was a workgirl. But they were not at all 
pleased to see her, and her sister made herself hard and proud, 
and could not bear to be helped out of the great lady’s treas- 
ures, and said very cruel things and drove her away. Then the 
girl put off her finery and came to live in the same house with 
her working sister. She came to learn how workgirls live, and 
what they think, and what they want, and she hoped to make 
her sister love her. That is all the story, Lotty.” 

“ It isn’t finished. And what does she want Melenda to love 
her for ?” 

Oh, Lotty, love makes people happy. Suppose you had neb 
ther Melenda nor Lizzie.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


125 


“ If I hadn’t got Melenda,” said the girl, “ I should wish I 
was dead and buried.” 


CHAPTER II. 

THE CITY OF HOGSDEN. 

It is best to drop a veil over the first few hours of that first 
night in Ivy Lane. It is sufficient to explain that the evening 
between eight and twelve is the liveliest time of the day for Ivy 
Lane ; that the Adelaide Tavern then does its briskest business, 
that the street is fullest, the voices loudest, the children most 
shrill, the women most loquacious, and the “ language ” most 
pronounced. On this evening there was a drunken man in one 
of the courts somewhere behind the house, and somebody of one 
sex was beating somebody of the other sex, with oaths on the one 
hand and screams on the other. Suppose some step should come 
up the stair, and some unknown person should knock at her door. 
Suppose the house was quite empty except for herself. Yet Ivy 
Lane is not the haunt of criminals ; its population is made up 
of honest working men and women, whose principal fault is that 
they have not yet learned the virtue of self-restraint. 

Towards midnight the noise began to subside, and the street 
grew rapidly quieter. Presently Valentine fell asleep, though 
with misgivings in her dreams, which would have become dread- 
ful nightmares had she but known that Lizzie, the latest to re- 
turn, had left the street door wide open for the night. 

When she awoke the morning was already well advanced, 
which was perceptible even to a new arrival by reason of the 
stillness. For at nine the men are at work, and the women are 
“ doing up ” in their rooms, and the children are at school. A 
Sabbath calm had fallen upon Ivy Lane and upon its courts to 
north and south. Valentine lay half asleep, thinking that she 
was at home, and wondering lazily why her maid did not come 
to call her. Suddenly she remembered where she was ; she 
sprang to her feet, pulled back the curtains, and looked abroad 
from behind the blind. The sun was high in the heavens, pour- 
ing down gracious floods of warmth and heat upon the linen in 
the yards ; in the beginning of all things the sun was created on 


126 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


purpose to dry the linen ; there seemed to be a universal calm and 
restfulness ; from the board school at the back there was heard 
a soothing, murmurous sound of many voices, and from Hoxton 
Street the distant roll of carts and the shouts of costers. Valen- 
tine was the latest riser that morning in Ivy Lane, except perhaps 
those who were lying down never to get up again any more, and 
those who were in temporary retirement with fevers and the like. 

Thankful and somewhat surprised that the night had passed 
with no worse adventure than that of the midnight clamor, she 
preceded to make her own breakfast. She hesitated, consider- 
ing whether it would be well to invite her friends in the next 
room. But the fear of Melenda decided her to breakfast alone. 
There was no milk, and she did not know where to get any 
more ; there was no water, and she had to go down-stairs and 
fill her own kettle, and to lay her fire, and to brush up the stove, 
as well as to make her own bed and dust the room. These things 
are not hardships exactly, but it seems more fitting somehow that 
other people should do them for one. What the other people 
think about it has never yet been made known to the world. 

When Eobinson Crusoe had quite made up his mind that 
there were neither cannibals nor wild beasts upon his island, the 
first thing he did was to go exploring. I have often thought 
how much more interesting his story might have been had there 
been one, only one, just one man-eating tiger on the island, so 
that he could have stalked Robinson and failed to catch him, 
while Robinson could have shot at him from places of ambush 
and failed to hit him ; and so both the tiger and the man would 
have had a lively time, and the reader would have been kept 
awake. No doubt in Hoxton there is more than one man-eater, 
but Valentine never saw any at all, though she was at first hor- 
ribly afraid of meeting one, and wondered what she should do if 
that should happen. She began that very morning, and daily 
continued, the exploration of Hoxton. There was indeed so 
much to see and to learn that she never got outside the narrow 
precincts of that town during the whole of her three months’ 
stay in it. 

The city of Hogsden, or Hoxton, as it is now the fashion to 
write the name, is not to outward view a romantic or a pictu- 
resque city ; none of its friends have claimed for it that kind of 
distinction. It does not stand upon a rock overhanging a river, 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


127 


like Quebec or Durham ; it is placed, on the other hand, upon 
a level plain beside a canal ; it is not a city of gardens, like Da- 
mascus ; nor a city of palaces, like Venice ; nor a mediaeval city 
with old walls, like Avignon ; it has no gardens left at all, ex- 
cept the two black patches of its two little squares ; yet once it 
was all garden. It has no palaces, though once it had great 
houses ; it has few associations or memories of the past, because 
as a city it is not yet more than a hundred years old. There is 
nothing at all beautiful or picturesque or romantic in it. There 
is only the romance of every life in it — there are sixty thousand 
lives in Hoxton, and every one with its own story to tell ; sixty 
thousand romances beginning, proceeding, and ending ; the sto- 
ries of those who are old and of those who are growing old ; of 
those who are children and those who are young men and maid- 
ens ; of those who think of love and those who remember the 
days when they thought about it ; of those who desire love to 
come and those who mourn for love departed. What more, in 
Heaven’s name, is wanted to make romance ? 

It is a city whose boundaries are as well marked as if it were 
surrounded, like York and Canterbury, with a high wall, for it 
has a canal to west and north, with St. Luke’s Workhouse stand- 
ing in the angle like the Tower of London or the citadel of 
breezy Troy. On the east side lies the broad highway of the 
Shoreditch or Kingsland Road, which parteth Hoxton from her 
sisters, Haggerston and Bethnal Green. The southern march is 
by the City Road and Old Street. It thus stands compact and 
complete ; it is a city lying secluded and quiet, like the city of 
Laish. Travellers come not within its borders ; few, even among 
Londoners, wot of it ; foreigners never hear of it ; to Americans 
it has no associations, and they never visit its streets ; it is con- 
tent with one line of omnibuses to connect it with the outer 
world ; there is no cabstand in its precincts ; it has no railway 
station. The newspapers do not expect to find anything of in- 
terest in Hoxton, and penny-a-liners never visit it for the sak:e 
of paragraphs. Its people are quiet and industrious ; folk who 
ask for nothing but steady work and fair wages, and have a 
rooted aversion to any public appearance, whether in a police 
court, or a county court, or on a political platform, or ^t a gos- 
pel revival, just as formerly they disliked appearing publicly in 
pillory or stocks. There is no habitual criminal class in Hox- 


128 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


ton, unless the recent destruction of rookeries in Whitecross 
Street has driven a few of the rogues to find temporary refuge, 
before “ chivvying ” begins again, in the southern streets of this 
city. As regards civic monuments and public buildings, there 
are eight churches and quite as many chapels, and some of the 
inhabitants have been known to visit these architectural marvels 
on the Sunday morning. There is the great theatre called the 
“ Britannier ’Oxton,” and the smaller, or less known. Theatre of 
Varieties in Bitfield Street ; there is a splendid great school for 
boys and girls, where were once the country almshouses of the 
Haberdashers ; there are the Fullers’ Almshouses ; there are four 
board schools to beautify four of its streets; there are the 
famous iron portals of Mary Street ; and there are two bridges 
over the canal. There are no rich residents, no carriages, no 
footmen ; none of the fiaunting luxuries which are described by 
travellers as existing at the AVest End. The houses are small 
and mostly low ; there is no doubt at all that everybody is quite 
poor, and that for six days in the week, all the year round, ev- 
erybody works for ten hours a day at least, and sometimes more. 
Yet the place has a cheerful look. There may be misery, but 
it is not apparent ; the people in the streets seem well fed, and 
are as rosy as London smoke and fog will allow. In the day- 
time the pavements of the side streets are mostly deserted, and 
there are not many who lounge, hands in pocket, at the corner 
of the street. Among the rows of small houses which speak of 
decent poverty there are not wanting one or two of the old 
houses, survivors of the time when they stood among green 
fields and orchards, the country residences of great merchants. 
The two squares in which they used to live are still left. And 
the streets are mostly broad, because there was plenty of room 
when they were built ; two or three of them can even boast a 
double width of pavement, supposed by some, imperfectly ac- 
quainted with London, to be a luxury known only in White- 
chapel Waste. And lastly, the streets, though certainly not re- 
markable for originality of design, are at least not all built after 
the same pattern, as may be seen in Bromley beyond Bow. 

This was Valentine’s first impression of the quarter, a first 
impression which might be modified but would never be quite 
destroyed. Since Hoxton possesses some eighty streets, it must 
not be supposed that she went into every one of them in a single 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


129 


morning. In fact she walked down Pitfield Street into Old 
Street, and up Hoxton Street into Hyde Road and Whitmore 
Street, and so over the bridge which leads to Kingsland, and 
back by way of St. John’s Road to Ivy Lane — the whole with 
lingering step and occasional excursions into side streets which 
seemed to promise something strange or curious. Not this 
morning only, but many successive mornings, she took this walk 
among streets where the people live. 

She discovered, if one may anticipate, in these daily wander- 
ings, many remarkable things and some remarkable people. Hox- 
ton, by the circumstances of its trade, is calculated to develop 
character in a manner impossible for some other quarters, such 
as Kentish Town and Camden Town, which are cities of the lit- 
tle clerk. Hoxton, however, is the city of the smaller industries 
and the lesser ingenuities. Here they make the little things nec- 
essary to civilized life, such things as the Andamanese and the 
Soudanese can do very well without, but which we must have. 
Thus, they are workers in mosaic and in lacquer ; they are buhl 
cutters, fret cutters, marqueterie cutters, razor grinders, glass 
bevellers, and they finish brushes. Some of them are hair hands, 
some pan hands, and some drawing hands, in the brush trade ; 
they stitch buff, at least they say so, but it may be a dark and 
allegorical announcement, because one hath never heard of buff, 
nor knoweth what its nature may be ; they gild envelopes, they 
emboss on steel ; as regards the women they are all classified as 
hands ” — nothing else is wanted by a woman, not intelligence, nor 
invention, nor grace, nor beauty, nor sweetness — nothing but hands. 
There are bead hands, feather hands — who are subdivided into 
curling hands, improvers, mounters, and aigrette hands — mantle 
hands, skirt hands, bodice hands, mobcap hands, childrens’ 
pinafore hands, cape -lining hands, butterfiy hands, and tie 
hands — who are again divided into fiat -work hands, back 
stitchers, band hands, slip stitchers, and front hands ; there are 
black borderers, braiders, and a hundred others. Besides all 
this, these industrious people make towel-horses, upholstery for 
perambulators, fancy boxes, lace paper for valentines, picture 
frames, paint brushes, trunk furniture, leather bags, scales, mark- 
ing-ink, trimmings, pipe clay, show cases, instrument cases, look- 
ing-glass backs, frillings and rush-wicks ; they carve pianos, dress 
collars, and work in horn ; they make fittings for public-houses ; 

6 ^ 


130 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


they dye cotton ; they deal in grindery and they melt tallow ; 
there linger still in Iloxton one or two of those almost extinct 
medicine-men called herbalists. Lastly, in the manufacture of 
annotto they are said to have no equal. 

These things Valentine did not find out in a single day, but 
in many. At first she wandered just as one wanders on a first 
visit to a foreign city, getting lost and then finding her way 
again, looking into all the shops, reading the names and the 
trade announcements and watching the people. And at first she 
was afraid ; but as day after day passed and no one molested her 
she grew more confident. 

Perhaps the least desirable of .all the streets is the very one in 
which she had to live. Ivy Lane, by some called Ivy Street, is 
vexed by certain courts, one of which was commanded by Val- 
entine’s window ; they are inhabited by the baser sort ; perhaps 
their presence gives a bad name to the street just as it materially 
increases the evening noise. Certainly Ivy Lane is not so clean 
as some of the Hoxton streets ; its windows are unwashed ; its 
doors want washing and painting. Yet it has both its chapel 
and its public-house. The former is small and plain in appear- 
ance, with a neat little pediment, a door in the middle, and a 
window on either side. The doctrine preached in it every Sun- 
day evening is remarkable for purity. As for the public-house, 
very likely its beer is equally remarkable and for the same rea- 
son. But Valentine never tasted either. There are also in the 
street two chandlers’ shops, two second-hand clothes shops, one 
of them filled with women’s dresses, and a carver in wood. Is 
not that a typical English street in which religion, drink, food, 
art, labor, and trade all find a place ? 

It was nearly one o’clock when Valentine returned to her 
lodgings. She had begun to see Hoxton. There seemed little 
in the place that was very depressing. A whole city at work is 
rather cheerful than otherwise. To be sure she had not been 
within the houses and she knew nothing of the interiors, which 
are more important from the human point of view than the out- 
side. Very likely clergymen, district visitors, Bible women, and 
the general practitioners know enough about the place to depress 
the most sanguine. And when she came back, she remembered 
all the girls who, like Melenda and Lotty and Lizzie, must be sit- 
ting within those walls stitching all day long for less than a penny 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


131 


an hour, and her heart fell. The cheerfulness goes out of honest 
labor when one learns that it only means a single penny an hour. 

As she climbed the steep, narrow stair, she saw, through the 
half -opened door of the ground-floor hack, a strange and curious 
thing. The occupant, an old woman, whom she had not seen be- 
fore, was solemnly engaged in dancing by herself, to an imaginary 
audience. She shook her petticoats, pirouetted, executed un- 
heard-of steps, capered and postured, with all the agility and some 
of the grace of a youthful danseuse. Valentine was thinking of 
the sewing-women ; the thing passed before her eyes as she went 
up the stair ; she saw it, but took no heed ; nor was it till afterwards 
that she remembered it and wondered what this might mean. 

She opened Melenda’s door and looked in. Something must 
have gone wrong. On Melenda’s brow, or where her brow should 
have been but for the fringe, there rested a cloud : it was a cloud 
much bigger than a man’s hand — in fact, it treated her as if she 
had been a goddess of the good old time, and enwrapped and en- 
folded her completely, so that she was veiled in cloud. The other 
two seemed cowed. Lotty, sitting on the bed, hardly dared to raise 
her eyes. Lizzie turned her head furtively, but without so much 
as a smile or even a look of recognition. Both waited for Melen- 
da to speak and went on with their work, but self-consciously. 

In fact, there had been a discussion carried on with great ani- 
mation by all three, mostly talking together. This method of 
controversy is lively, but hardly calculated to settle the points at 
issue. Lotty’s part in it was chiefly one of remonstrance and 
entreaty. She had been guilty of eating some of Valentine’s 
ham for supper, and of drinking a cup of cocoa. Perhaps it 
was the unusual sense of repletion which had given her a good 
and almost painless night, though Melenda’s attitude in the morn- 
ing filled her with a sense of guilt. Lizzie, on the other hand, 
who had no excuse, except that of hunger, for selling her inde- 
pendence for a plate of ham, actually gloried in the action, and 
proclaimed her readiness to do it again if invited, and laughed 
at Melenda for not taking all she could get. There were rebel- 
lious questionings, scoffs, and doubts — all put down to that con- 
cert, and the talk with the gentleman afterwards. Lizzie never 
used to show such spirit before she was tempted. Many bear with 
pride the ills for which there seems no cure ; but when a way is 
shown, alas ! poor pride ! Melenda tried argument, with reduce 


132 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


tion to first principle, dogmatic assertion, and quotations from 
the opinions and maxims of the Philosopher Sam. Valentine 
and her ham were only the text. The independence of woman 
was the true theme. 

“Do you want anything?” asked Melenda, with an ominous 
glitter in her eye. 

“ No,” said Valentine, “ I only came — ” 

“Then you can go away,” said her sister; “we’re working- 
girls, and we’ve got our bread to earn. We haven’t taken money 
off of rich ladies for nothing. You can go away and eat up all 
the rest of the ham — you and your ham !” 

“ But, Melenda — ” 

“ Go away, I say. AVe’ve got our work to do. Don’t come 
wasting time. And Lizzie eating such a lot of supper that she 
couldn’t be waked this morning. Go away.” 

Valentine meekly obeyed and closed the door. So far she 
had made very little way with her sister. But she caught the 
eyes of Lotty as she went out. They said, as plainly as eyes 
could speak, “ Forgive her, and don’t give up trying.” 

“ Oh, Melenda !” said the possessor of these eyes reproachfully. 

Melenda sniffed. 

“ As for me,” said Lizzie, “ if I had the good-luck to have 
such a sister I wouldn’t turn her out of the room. I’d have bet- 
ter manners.” 

“You’d beg and borrow all she had to give, I suppose, and 
call that good manners ?” 

“ I’d take anything she wanted to give, and I’d behave pretty 
to her.” 

“ She ain’t your sister, then. And I’m old enough to know 
how to behave.” 

This closed the discussion. And all there was for the girls’ 
dinner — while, as Lizzie reflected, plenty reigned in the next 
room — was a thick slice each of bread-and-butter. 

At Hoxton, I am told, nobody at all, not even any of the eight 
vicars or the seven curates — but this may be incorrect — ever 
thinks of dining late. Dinner at half -past seven is not possible ; 
one ceases to think of such a thing the moment one begins to 
breathe the air of Hoxton. Valentine, therefore, at one o’clock, 
began naturally to consider the subject of dinner instead of lunch- 
eon. She had to look at it from quite a new point of view — 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


133 


namely, to think how it was to he provided, and how she was to 
use those beautiful instruments provided for her. To all right- 
minded and cultivated persons dinner necessarily involves pota- 
toes ; you cannot dine without potatoes. Other things may be 
neglected. Pickles, pudding, fish, soup, may be considered as 
non-essentials, but not potatoes. I have, it is true, seen a plough- 
boy sitting under a hedge making what he called his dinner with 
a lump of bacon fat, a great hunch of bread, and a clasp-knife, 
but he thought of potatoes ; and I have seen a navvy making 
what he called his dinner with a great piece of underdone beef 
cut thick, as they love it, those others, and half a loaf. But all 
this is merely stoking, or taking in coal. Both navvy and plough- 
boy know very well that without potatoes there can be no dinner. 
There must be potatoes. Valentine had the remains of her ham 
and part of yesterday’s loaf, but she had no potatoes. She spread 
her cloth, laid out these viands, which looked very much like 
luncheon so far as they went. What about potatoes ? If she 
wanted them she would have to buy them. Where should she 
go in search of potatoes ? And how was she to buy them ? Do 
they sell potatoes by the dozen, like eggs, or by the peck, like 
pease, or by the pound, like cherries, or by the pint, like beer, or 
singly, like peaches ? And how do you carry them home ? Claude 
had forgotten one thing. He thought you could live in Hoxton 
without a basket for marketing. She had, it is true, an apron, 
but it was not one of those aprons which are designed for the 
carriage of things like potatoes. 

Again, even if she could get over that difficulty she would 
have to fill her saucepan with water, for which purpose she would 
have to go down-stairs and fetch some from the cistern, and that 
old woman below, who danced all by herself, might be looking out 
of window, and she might make remarks. And she would have 
to light the fire again. And lastly, if she had got her potatoes 
and had washed and peeled them and had put them in the pot, 
how long should they boil ? Christmas plum-puddings, she had 
read somewhere, are boiled for several days and several nights con- 
tinuously. But in no book had she ever read the length of time 
required to bring out the full mealiness of a potato. And then, 
when she had boiled her potatoes and eaten them, she would have 
all the trouble of clearing everything away and washing up. Truly, 
as has been already observed,certain things ought to be done for one. 


134 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


She felt that she could not take all this trouble, at least for 
that day. To-morrow, perhaps, but not to-day. She would be 
contented for once with a simple luncheon. She therefore cut 
some ham and made some sandwiches. When she had eaten 
these and would have poured out a glass of water, she found that 
her filter was empty, and the look of the outside of the cistern 
below did not speak well for its contents. Besides, she did not 
want to go down-stairs. So, like Melenda and the girls in the 
other room, she contented herself with some cold tea remaining 
from breakfast, and then pretended, like the navvy and the plough- 
boy, that she had made her dinner. Thus easy is it to take the 
downward step, so narrow is the interval between civilization — of 
which a modern dinner is by many considered the highest form of 
expression — and barbarism, in which there is no dinner ; so brief 
is the space which separates us — I mean ourselves, gentle reader, 
of the highest culture attainable — from the folk of Ivy Lane. 

Consider, however, the time which must be spent every day, 
by one who lives alone, in the mere preparation of meals and in 
the cleaning up. The first clean-up in the morning ; the fetch- 
ing and carrying of water ; the second clean-up after breakfast ; 
the clean-up after dinner ; the clean-up after tea ; more fetching 
and carrying water ; always more cleaning of dishes and drying 
of dusters. Good heavens ! one used to wonder how the hermits 
of old managed to pass their days. Why, they were passed, not 
in holy meditation at all, for which there was no time, but in 
continually brushing, brooming, sweeping, washing, laying the 
cloth, taking it off again and putting it away, cleaning the win- 
dows, sweeping up the hearth, buying potatoes and cooking them, 
making the bed, dressing and undressing — ^the wonder is that 
these holy men found any time for meditation at all. Certainly 
they have left behind them few monuments of their lifelong 
thoughts in seclusion. As for those who did any other work, 
they, like Melenda and her friends, never washed anything at all. 

The dinner over, Valentine rested and read a little, and began 
the daily journal of her exile, passing lightly over her late skir- 
mish with Melenda, and saying nothing — great is the power of 
the suppressio veri — about the absence of potatoes, so that the 
impression on the mind of any one who read those journals would 
be that there had been no difficulty at all as regards the dinner 
question. Yet she herself remembered that the question would 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


135 


have to be faced again ; and, besides, the ham would not last 
forever. 

About four o’clock she thought she would go to Tottenham 
by the tram, and visit the almshouse once more and her blind 
mother. 


CHAPTER III. 

ON CURLS AND DIMPLES. 

I HAVE always thought it a very remarkable coincidence that 
on the very first day of Valentine’s sojourn among this strange 
people she should have discovered the great family secret — that 
secret which Lady Mildred thought known to no one but her 
solicitor and herself. Had the discovery been made earlier, the 
great renunciation might never have been undertaken ; had it 
been made later, it would have been prosecuted in a different 
spirit. Valentine, in short, on this day established her previous- 
ly doubtful identity. Perhaps it is as well to know for certain 
who you are as well as what you are. A homo in the abstract, 
male or female, cannot be expected to take as much interest in 
himself, or to care so much about his own views and opinions, 
as a homo who knows at least one generation of his descent, 
just enough to connect him with the human family. All phi- 
losophy is based upon the sentiment of family as well as indi- 
viduality. Valentine, therefore, after this day, but not before, 
was capable of constructing a system of philosophy for herself 
if she wished. This in itself is an enormous gain. 

“ I thought you’d come back, Polly,” said the old lady with 
much gratification. “ I knew you’d come back by yourself when 
Miss Beatrice had enjoyed her bit o’ fun with the pretending 
and nonsense. Well, we must humor ’em, mustn’t we ? Rhoder, 
child, you can go home. Your Aunt Polly-which-is-Marla will 
make my tea for me to-night. So you go home.” The girl 
obeyed, glad to be released from the embarrassment of taking 
her tea with an aunt so very much unlike any other aunts she 
knew belonging either to herself or to her friends. 

“ And so you’re going to stay here three months, while her 
ladyship goes abroad or somewhere, are you, Polly ? Well now. 
And with Melenda too ! Well, my dear, I don’t know what your 


136 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


temper may be, but of course you can’t show off before my lady, 
which is a blessed thing for a young girl. And how you’ll get 
on with your sister the Lord knows, because Melenda’s awful. 
Is she friendly ?” 

“ Not very friendly, yet. But I hope she will be.” 

“ She’s morning, noon, and night in a rage. First it’s the work, 
and then it’s the wages, and then it’s the long hours, and she’s 
always hungry, which makes her snappish. As for that, the 
last time she came you could count every bone in her body, 
poor thing.” 

Valentine made the tea and cut the bread-and-butter, while 
the old lady, pleased to have so good a listener, talked without 
pause about her children and her grandchildren. 

“ It’s a real pleasure to have you back again, Polly. There’s 
not many pleasures left for a blind old woman. And good- 
natured and willing with it. Well !” This is an interjection 
which may mean many things, and stands in turns for patience, 
resignation, hope, sarcasm, approbation, or even despair. This 
time it was accompanied by a heartfelt sigh, and stood for 
prayerful gratitude that so good a daughter had been restored 
to her. “ They’ve taught you to make a good cup of tea, my 
dear, though I’m afraid you’ve a heavy hand with the caddy, 
and to cut bread-and-butter as it should be cut, though too much 
butter and the bread too thin for poor folk. I suppose you 
often do it for Miss Beatrice ?” 

“Very often,” said Valentine, truthfully. 

“ And you don’t fidget like Khoder, who’s always wanting to 
be off again unless she ean sit in a corner and read her book. 
She’s just like your father, Polly, terrible fond of a book.” 

“ Was my father fond of reading ?” 

“ Yes, my dear, he was, and that’s the only good thing he 
ever was fond of. Never mind him, Polly. Some day, per- 
haps, I’ll tell you all about him, but never to Claude. You can 
tell your daughter everything. That’s the comfort of having 
girls, though a woman’s always fondest of her boys. A son’s a 
son till he gets him a wife, but your daughter’s your daughter — 
as you’ll find out some day, my dear — all the days of your life, 
though Melenda has never been the daughter I wanted.” 

“ Then, mother, I am all the more pleased to be of use. Now 
— what can I do next ? I’ve washed up the things and put them 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


13Y 


away, and tidied the table. You’ve got a beautiful geranium 
in the window ; I will cut away the dead leaves. Rlioda 
ought to do that for you. Or shall I read to you ? I’m sure 
you would like me to read to you sometimes.” 

“ No, Polly,” replied the old lady, drawing herself up with 
dignity, “ you sha’n’t do nothing of the kind. I’m feeling very 
well this summer ; I never felt better in my life ; nearly all my 
rheumatics has gone away and I sleep all night, and I haven’t 
said anything that I remember to make you think that I required 
reading. And as for years, I’m sixty turned, but the youngest 
of them all. If I require reading I believe I can make my wants 
known and send for a clergyman, unless I am took sudden, which 
may happen to anybody, and one ought to be prepared. Perhaps 
allowance is made for such. No reading, thank you, my dear.” 

“ I didn’t mean religious reading exactly,” Valentine made 
haste to explain. “ However, let us talk instead, and I will at- 
tend to your flowers. Tell me something more about all of us 
when we were little — Claude and Melenda and me.” 

This she said in perfect innocency, and without a thought of 
what might follow. 

“ I will, Polly. Well, my dear, you were a fat little thing, 
with chubby anms and legs, and curls all over your forehead, and the 
most beautiful little laughing face that ever was seen. No won- 
der my lady fell in love with you at first sight. Oh, my dear, it 
was a cruel hard thing to part with you, a hard thing it was.” 

“ Why did you then, mother ?” 

“ It was for your own good, my dear, and her ladyship prom- 
ised to give you a good bringing-up, which she’s done, I’m sure. 
Besides, I couldn’t bear to think of that pretty face brought to 
shame and tears — ” 

“ But why shame and tears, mother ?” 

“Well, dear, some time or other p’r’aps I’ll tell you. Not 
to-night. I can’t bear to talk of it nor to think of it. But 
some day I’ll tell you, because you’re Polly. But not to Claude. 
If you went away I thought there’d be one of them safe, for 
how to save them other blessed innocents I knew not. Oh, it 
was a great danger, Polly.” 

She paused and sighed, and her lips moved in silence. 

“ The Lord only knows,” she said, presently, “ how I got 
through that time.” She shuddered and clasped her hands* 


138 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Ah, my dear, it’s a wonderful thing when you’re old to re- 
member what you’ve gone through. If the Lord sends the 
trouble, he gives the strength to bear it.” 

“You were in trouble, were you, mother?” Valentine laid 
her hand upon the blind woman’s cheek. “ Forget it — don’t 
think about it.” 

“ I won’t, my dear. Well, when you went away the house 
was dull and quiet, because Claude was a grave child always, 
and Melenda never had your pretty ways.” 

“ Had I pretty ways ? Oh, I’m afraid I have lost them. What 
a pity to grow up and lose one’s pretty ways !” 

“ And curls all over your head you had.” 

“ Had I ? And now my hair is quite straight.” 

“ And a dimple in your cheek you had.” 

“ The dimple is gone too, I am afraid ; gone away with the 
curls and the pretty ways. What becomes of all these things, 
and where do they go to ?” 

“ Dimples don’t go, Polly, but perhaps it doesn’t show as it 
did. Dimples never go. It is on the left cheek, my dear, and 
it shows when you laugh. Ah ! and you were always laughing.” 

Then, for some unknown reason, Valentine started and flushed 
a rosy red. 

“ And you had, besides, a little brown mark, a birth-mark, on 
your arm, just above your elbow. You were the only one of all 
my children with so much as a speck or spot upon their bodies. 
Clean-skinned and straight-limbed children you were all, and as 
upright as a lance, except for that little spot on your arm.” 

Valentine made no reply, but her cheek was now quite pale, 
and she felt dizzy and was fain to catch at the back of a chair, 
because the walls began to go round and the solid earth to quake. 
This extraordinary terrestrial phenomenon, which was not no- 
ticed by any of the daily papers, nor even by the other resi- 
dents in Lilly’s, was entirely caused by the sympathy of the 
great round globe for Valentine, when by these simple words 
the old lady revealed the secret of her birth and filled her with 
strange emotions and troubled the calmness of her brain. Strange 
that Lady Mildred should never have thought of these little 
signs and proofs. But mothers, like leopardesses, know the 
spots upon their children which cannot be changed any more 
than the skin of the Ethiopian. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


139 


“ On your right arm it is, Polly, my dear. Oh, I remember 
it very well.” 

Valentine made no reply. 

“ Where are you, dearie ?” The blind woman stretched out 
her hands. “ Where are you, Polly ?” 

“ I am here, mother,” she replied, in an altered voice. “ I 
am here. But the heat of the day — or something — made me 
giddy. Wait a moment, mother dear. I will be hack directly.” 

She went out into the open court before the cottages. After 
all these years of uncertainty, now she knew the truth. There 
was no longer any doubt. 

Suppose that Prince Florestan, just before coming of age, was 
to discover that he was not the prince at all, but only the son of 
Adam the gardener, and that Adam junior, who had always been 
employed in picking the strawberries, gathering the cherries, 
choosing the ripe peaches, shelling the pease, and cutting the 
asparagus for him to eat, was going to change places with him. 
And suppose Adam junior was suddenly to learn that he was 
going to eat up, himself, all the fruits of the earth as they came 
in due season, and that the former prince was to be occupied in 
cultivating the gardens for him ? What would be the feelings 
of those young men ? \ 

Valentine’s case was not quite this, because the^e never was 
any case quite the same as Valentine’s ; but it was near it. She 
always knew that one of the two was Adam the g^dener’s son, 
and now she knew which it was. Yet it must ren^in her secret. 
Nobody — not Claude, nor Violet, nor the blind: old lady, nor 
Joe — must know it, partly because it was Lady Mildred’s own 
secret and must be kept for her sake ; and partly because for 
three months to come she was to depend upon Claude as a 
brother for protebtiqn and adyjce^ and partly because neither 
this poor old woman noPMetehda must know that she was among 
them on false pretences. 

Some girls on such a discovery would have made the most of 
the situation. They would have gone away and wandered with 
dazed eyes among the fields or beside the banks of a silver 
stream ; they would have clasped hands and ejaculated ; they 
would have thrown themselves in beautiful attitudes upon sofas 
or in easy-chairs. Most girls would do, I think, exactly what 
Valentine did. Like the young lady who went on cutting bread- 


140 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


and-butter, Valentine went back to tbe cottage and resumed her 
trimming of the flowers in the window. For, in fact, the dim- 
ple in the cheek, the curly hair which would not be brushed 
straight or lie down, the brown mark upon the arm, just below 
the elbow — not to speak, Valentine thought, of the pretty and 
caressing ways — all these belonged not to herself at all but — to 
Violet. Violet therefore was Polly-which-is-Marla and she was 
Beatrice, and Lady Mildred was her mother, and Melenda was 
not her sister save in the bonds of womanhood. 

This was her discovery. 

She was not, then, that interesting creature, the poor girl edu- 
cated and brought up as a gentlewoman : she was nothing in the 
world but Beatrice Eldridge, the daughter of a highly respecta- 
ble country gentleman, and the granddaughter of an earl. She 
was not a child of the people at all. Her mother was not the 
poor woman who now sat in darkness ; nor, a more important 
thing still, was Claude her brother. Something of her pride 
was torn from her by the discovery. She had made up her mind 
ever since she had been able to understand at all what the thing 
meant, that she was the daughter of these humble people. She 
honestly believed it. She thought that she was returning to her 
own folk after many years ; and now she was with them indeed, 
but under false pretences. If the old lady in the cottage knew 
the truth, flrst she would freeze, then she would fold her hands 
over her white apron, and then she would stand up like a village 
schoolgirl, and say, “Yes, Miss Beatrice, and my humble service 
to her ladyship,” and Claude, if he knew the truth, would in- 
stantly lose his fraternal manner, and could do nothing more for 
her. Of course Lady Mildred knew that he would regard her 
as his sister. Why, the position would be intolerable. Me- 
lenda, for her part, would be, if possible, more farouche than 
ever ; Lizzie would be more shy and reserved ; Lotty would be 
more timid ; and as for all the weaker brethren in Ivy Lane, and 
wherever the bruit and fame of the thing might spread, and as 
soon as it became known that there was actually living in their 
midst a young lady who would in a few weeks be the possessor 
of much treasure, all their worst qualities would come straight 
to the front with every possible form of cunning, meanness, 
greed, and self-seeking. 

“ Polly, my dearie, what’s the matter ? Is it the heat again ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


141 


“ I am better now, mother.” 

“You ain’t cross, my dear, because I wouldn’t let you read, are 
you ? I’m sure you read beautiful, and you shall read if you like.” 

“ Cross, mother ! That would be a strange thing. No, I do 
not want to read since you don’t want it. Shall I sing to you ? 
I should like you to hear me sing.” 

“ Why, my dear, I should like that better than reading. And 
then we can go on talking again. None of the other children 
ever had a singing voice. None of them ever went about sing- 
ing as most children do. Their father couldn’t sing, though he 
could play. All his cleverness went into his fingers.” 

Violet could not sing. Her voice was of small compass, and 
she never sang even alone or with Valentine. All her clever- 
ness, like her father’s, went into her fingers. She could play, 
though not so well as Valentine. She played to amuse herself ; 
but she painted and drew professionally, so to speak. 

“ I can sing,” said Valentine. “ I will sing you a hymn,mother.” 

She hesitated, and then for some fancied appropriateness — I 
know not what, perhaps it existed only in her imagination — of 
the place and the time with the motif of the hymn, she chose 
an old Puritan hymn which has now dropped out of use and 
been forgotten, since the churches resolved to stifie the sadness 
of life and to simulate the voice of one who continually rejoices 
and is not afraid and has neither doubt nor question. This 
hymn had very little joy in it, save that of a faith, humble and 
resigned, with an undercurrent, an unexpressed feeling of sor- 
row, and even perhaps of humble remonstrance, that things had 
not been ordered otherwise from the beginning. This hymn 
begins with the words, “ We’ve no abiding city here,” and as 
Valentine sang them the blind old woman joined her hands as 
one who prays, and the tears gathered in her eyes. 

“ Oh, Polly,” she cried, “ my own dear Polly ! To think that 
you should ever come back to your old mother, and to be such 
a good girl and all ! Let me kiss you again, my dear. Melenda 
never had your pretty ways, poor thing ! Some day — not yet — 
some day I’ll tell you all my troubles. But you mustn’t never 
tell Claude — mind that. We mustn’t never let Claude know. 
You and me will keep the secret to ourselves, my dear. Come 
often. Come whenever you can. Oh, my Polly, you have made 
me so glad and happy, my dear — so glad and happy. Your 


142 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


voice is like her ladyship’s. You’ve caught that by living with 
Miss Beatrice. But your ways are all your own — my own little 
Polly’s soft and pretty ways.” 


CHAPTER IV. 
lotty’s romance. 

Valentine went away with a guilty feeling; as if she had 
peeped into the sealed chamber, or eaten the forbidden fruit, 
or searched after the unlawful mystery, or inquired of the wise 
woman. Yet truly it was not her own seeking, but the simplest 
accident, which disclosed the thing. The discovery was pre- 
mature. Had she been able to choose she would rather not 
have made it, because the only course now left to her was to 
go on precisely and exactly as if she had not found it out, and 
so she would be among them all under false pretences. 

When she got home between nine and ten o’clock the market 
in Hoxton Street was in full swing, and the matrons of Ivy Lane 
were gathered together in the street, talking in knots ; there was 
a group of men about the doors of the Adelaide, and a crowd 
noisily disputing within the bar. 

Was it imagination? or had there already come upon Valen- 
tine in one short hour, namely, since the discovery, a subtle 
change, so that she no longer regarded the people with quite 
the same sense of relationship ? She was no longer their sister 
in the narrower sense. We are all of us, to be sure, brothers 
and sisters — the clergyman tells us so every Sunday, kindly 
coupling himself with the assurance, “ for you and for me, breth- 
ren.” But the recognition of this fact produces fruits of affec- 
tion and charity in comparative scantiness. One may, besides, 
acknowledge the relationship, and yet be conscious of a certain 
natural superiority. Perhaps it was only a passing fancy. Yet 
there must have been some change. She had come to stay with 
her own individual sister; she could only now stay with the 
universal sister, and make believe that she was the private sister. 
And a great mass of miscellaneous thoughts came crowding into 
her mind too fast and too numerous for comfortable reception. 

As for the people, they already knew Valentine, though only 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


143 


just arrived, as the sister of a workgirl living among them in 
one of their houses — presumably a shop-girl from her neat dress 
and respectable appearance, and also apparently “quiet” — a 
quality which in Ivy Lane, as elsewhere, commands the highest 
respect. The women parted right and left to let her pass, and 
then closed in again and carried on their parliament with talk 
as copious and faces as animated as if they had been a confer- 
ence of advanced women assembled for the purpose of destroy- 
ing religion and reversing the political power of the sexes. What 
do they talk about, these feminine parliaments of the cross- 
ways ? Indeed, no man knoweth ; if any were to stay his steps 
and listen, that rash person would probably be treated as an 
intruder into the mysteries of Bona Dea. One might, it is true, 
imitate the reprehensible example of Clodius. Foolish persons, 
ignorant of these parliaments and of other things, speak of 
streets such as Ivy Lane as dull and monotonous. How can a 
hive of humanity ever be dull ? There is no monotony where 
there are, constantly happening, common to all, and talked about 
by all, sickness and suffering, birth and death, good hap and 
evil hap, and the wonderful and dramatic situations continually 
worked out upon the stage of the human comedy by that mys- 
terious unknown Power, known only to man by one quality, and 
named accordingly by such as speak of him as “ The Unex- 
pected.” Not a day but something happens to redeem such a 
street from the charge of dulness. Only those places are dull 
where, though the human ant-hill is divided into streets, the 
human ants come not forth to exchange words with each other, 
and one man knoweth not his brother, and each by himself sel- 
fishly eateth his own cobnuts and giveth his neighbor none, and 
each alone bitterly endureth his own pain. It is gentility, es. 
pecially the first beginning of it, which is dull, when people 
separate from their fellows and refuse to partake with them of 
the sacrament of sympathy, whereof quiet conversation is the out- 
ward and visible sign. Kingsland, for instance, is dull, and 
Shepherd’s Bush is dull, and Camden Town is inexpressibly dull. 
The man who once proposed a Palace of Delight for Whitechapel 
forgot that it was ever so much more needed in Camden Town. 

Now, as Valentine passed through the open doorway, a man 
who was standing within stepped aside to make room for her 
and took off his hat to her. It was not until later that she real- 


144 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


ized the significance of the gesture. Every one does not recog- 
nize the fact that the English working-man never takes off his 
hat to ladies. A man who does so is not a working-man. He 
is, or has been, among the ranks of those who do take off their 
hats ; that is, he is, or has been, a gentleman. As Valentine 
went up the stairs this man went slowly into the ground-floor 
front. She turned to look at him. He looked quite old and 
was tall, but stooped a good deal. It was too dark to see much 
of him, but the gaslight in the street outside lit up the narrow 
passage. She could see that he had long white hair and a great 
mass of it, and that his chin was white with a week’s growth of 
beard, for it was now Friday, and he only shaved on Sunday 
morning. His eyes met Valentine’s in the doorway, and she 
remembered afterwards a strange sadness in them, which made 
her wonder what was the history of the man. In her own room 
she lit her reading-lamp, and sat down intending to follow out 
some of the lines of thought opened up to her by her discov- 
ery. But she remembered Lotty in the next room, and with self- 
reproach she went to see her. 

The other two girls were out, and Lotty was lying alone. She 
was in much suffering to-night ; her back was bad and her cough 
was bad ; she was moaning as she lay, but in a whisper, so to 
speak, because when people sleep three in a bed, the habit is ac- 
quired of doing one’s groans inaudibly for fear of waking the 
others. The house was nearly opposite the public-house, and 
the smell of beer and tobacco, with the noisy talk of the drink- 
ing men, came pouring in at the open window. 

“What have you eaten to-day?” asked Valentine. 

“ I am not hungry. AVell, then ; bread and tea.” 

“ How long did you work ?” 

“The others worked all day from half -past six o’clock till 
nearly nine. But I had to lie down sometimes.” 

From half-past six till nine ! Fourteen hours and a half — all 
the livelong day. They had been doing this for eight years, 
and they were going on with it all their lives, with no hope of 
any change or any improvement or any mitigation. It seems a 
heavy sentence, my sisters, for the sin of Eve. 

Valentine remembered that in her cupboard there lay a great 
bagful of grapes — big purple grapes from a hothouse, every one 
as big as a pigeon’s egg, and beautiful to look upon for their 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


145 


delicate bloom. Claude left them there for her. Without any- 
more talking she got a bunch of these and began to put them 
one by one into Lotty’s mouth, just as a nurse gives food to a 
little child. It -was chiefly exhaustion that had brought on the 
pain. When she had eaten a few of the grapes it was nearly gone. 

Then Valentine carried her into her own room, and laid her 
on her own bed and undressed her. 

“You shall stay 'here to-night,” she said, “a little out of the 
noise from the street. And, besides, my bed is softer than yours. 
I can sleep in the easy-chair. Don’t dare to say a word, Lotty. 
Remember that I am Melenda’s sister” — Oh, Valentine and 

you have never seen me in a rage. I can get into terrible rages 
if I am contradicted or put out. There, now you are comfort- 
able. Oh, what ragged stockings and shoes ! I shall give you 
a new pair to-morrow. Melenda said you were to have what- 
ever I gave you. And you want everything, you poor thing ! 
And now you must eat some more grapes.” 

“ If you could only persuade Melenda to take some,” said 
Lotty. “ But she won’t, and she’s getting thinner every day.” 

“ What shall I do ? How can I persuade her ?” 

“ Don’t do anything, and then, perhaps, she’ll come round.” 

“ Now, Lotty, listen to me. To-morrow is Saturday. The 
next day is Sunday. I shall do all your work for you to-mor- 
row — do you hear ? — and that will give you two days’ rest. And 
then we will see afterwards.” 

“ You can’t do my work.” 

“Yes, I can. Why, I can do all kinds of work. Are you 
tired now ?” 

“ I was tired when you came ; but I am not tired now. It 
was the grapes. You wouldn’t rather be out than sitting with me, 
would you ? But, of course, you are a young lady. Lizzie and the 
City Road isn’t fit company for you. Not that it’s good for Liz.” 

“ I would rather be here with you.” Valentine stroked her 
thin cheek and soft hair. “ It’s better for both of us.” 

“ Oh ! you are good,” said Lotty. “ And please don’t mind 
Melenda. She flies out easy, but she comes round again ; and 
she’s kind to me, and never out of temper, though sometimes 
my back’s too bad for me to do any work at all. Then she 
works for both. There’s not a quicker girl with her needle any* 
where than Melenda.” 

1 


146 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


“ I will try not to mind. But, Lotty, is there nothing that can 
be done for you ? Have you no friends anywhere ?” 

“Ho, I haven’t got any friends. Father and mother were 
country horn and bred, and I don’t know where they came from. 
I’ve got no friends — only Melenda.” 

“Let me be your friend too.” Valentine stooped and kissed 
the girl’s forehead. “ Don’t be proud, like Melenda. Let me be 
your friend too, Lotty.” 

“Oh! it’s wonderful,” said Lotty. “Why, you are crying too, and 
you’re a young lady. How can I he friends with a young lady ?” 

“ Why not ? And I’m Melenda’s sister, you know.” 

Again — oh, Valentine ! 

“ Melenda says you ought to be like herself, and a workgirl. 
Sam — that’s her brother — ” 

“ I know my brother Sam,” said Valentine. A third time? Oh, 
mendacious one ! But it is only the first step which gives trouble. 

“ Sam says there oughtn’t to be gentlemen and ladies — only 
men and women. But then, ladies don’t use language, and they 
don’t drink. It must be a beautiful thing to be a lady, even 
without the fine things you had on when you came here first.” 

“ If I am a lady, that is all the more reason for my being your 
friend. Tell me about yourself. How is it you are so friend- 
less ? And were you always so poor ?” 

“ It’s through father — because he failed and went bankrupt.” 

“ Oh ! is that all ?” Mere bankruptcy, in the light of Ivy 
Lane poverty, seemed a very small thing. 

“ Father had a shoj^ once in the Goswell Eoad, you know. It 
wasn’t a big place, but oh ! it was a most beautiful little shop, 
with a parlor behind and four bedrooms above. In those days we 
used to go to school — not a board school, but a select academy 
for young ladies, kept by a real lady who had been a dressmaker 
in a large way, but met with misfortunes — a beautiful school. 
On Sunday we all went to chapel, where we had a pew, and put 
on our Sunday frocks. I don’t think there ever was a man fonder 
of his business and prouder of his shop than father. He’d be 
content to spend the whole day in it, setting out the things, 
sorting his drawers, and talking with his customers. And some- 
times he’d go out and stand on the curb admiring his windows, 
where the ribbons used to hang up most lovely. But mother, 
she’d make him put on his hat and go out for an hour of fresh 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


147 


air. Mostly he’d go down Aldersgate Street and into Cheapside, 
just to see how they dressed their windows. After a good day’s 
takings, he’d come in and have supper and talk about bigger 
premises and of the time when we would be his assistants.” 

The romance of a small draper’s shop ! Yet in it were all the 
elements which make up romance : the hopes and ambitions of 
a man for himself and those he loved — the family and the home, 
the wife and the children — and unexpected fate impending over 
all with cruel and undeserved disaster. No castle with moated 
keep could contain better elements of romance. 

“ And no thought,” said Lotty, “ of what would happen.” 

What did happen ?” 

‘‘ Father went bankrupt. He was broke.” 

“ How was he — broke ?” 

“ I don’t know. The customers fell off. Everybody said it 
was bad times and so many out of work. It couldn’t be the 
fault of father ; nobody could be more civil and obliging. Per- 
haps they got things cheaper at the stores and the big shops ; 
but father said every one must make his profit, else how could 
people live ? Whatever it was, the customers fell off, and then 
father he began to get low-spirited and anxious, and things got 
worse. As for mother, she’d sit and cry until he came in, and 
then she’d brisk up and pretend to laugh, and say things would 
come round, and cheer him up a bit. Oh, poor mother !” 

“Poor mother !” Valentine echoed. 

“ That lasted a long time, and we got poorer every day. There 
was no more school for us, and we sent away the girl. And one 
day I remember — it’s twelve years ago and more — father came 
into the back parlor, and sat down and cried as if his heart would 
break because there was a man in possession, and we were ruined.” 
“ Oh !” 

“ That’s all. They sold everything we had, and the beautiful 
shop that we’d all been so proud of was empty and shut up. 
Then we went into lodgings, and father began to look out for 
work. But there, he was broken-hearted, and he went about as 
if he was silly.” 

“ And then ?” 

“ Why, he came home every day without finding it. Nobody, 
you see, is so helpless as a draper who’s been bankrupt. For the 
other tradesmen despise a bankrupt, and it makes them think that 


148 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


he must drink or be extravagant. And, besides, he knows too 
much. They don’t like to let shop-assistants learn all the secrets 
of the trade. So he could get no work. Then mother, she took 
ill with the misery, and went off her poor head, and no wonder.” 
Lotty stopped to choke. “ The parish took her, and she died.” 

“ And what became of your father ?” 

“ Oh ! don’t blame him, poor dear, because he was quite bro- 
ken-hearted. And he began to drink, and then he had to be a 
reader for the parish at eighteenpence a day — him who’d kept 
his own shop ; and one day he took a chill from standing in the 
mud with his broom and his bad boots, and went to hospital, 
and died there.” 

“And then you were left alone? You and — had you any 
brothers or sisters ?” 

Lotty hesitated. 

“ Don’t tell me more than you like, my dear,” said Valentine. 

“ There was — one — other,” Lotty replied, with hesitation. “ It 
was Tilly.” v 

“ What became of Tilly ? Did she die, too ?” 

“ Hush !” Lotty whispered. “ I don’t know where she is now, 
whether she’s alive or dead. She said she wouldn’t stand it, and 
she went away.” 

“ What did she go away for ?” 

“ She was a header ; she was that clever with her fingers she 
could do all kinds of things. Once she had very good work as 
a butterfly-and-bird hand, and did flat work and slip stitching. 
But there wasn’t much work, and she couldn’t get enough to 
keep her; and one day she up and said she wouldn’t stand it 
any longer, and so, with only a kiss and a cry, she went right 
away — Melenda was out, else she’d never ha’ let her go — and 
we’ve never seen her since. Sometimes Melenda goes to look 
for her, but she’s never found her.” 

“ Where has she gone, then ? Where does Melenda look for her ?” 

Lotty did not answer this question. 

“ Sometimes,” she said, “ when I’m alone in the evening, I 
think I hear her step on the stair, and oh ! what I would do if 
Tilly would only come back, and be good again — my poor Tilly ! 
— ^just as she used to be, and bear it all brave, like Melenda.” 

“ And then I think about Liz,” Lotty went on, after a pause. 
“ Because she’s discontented, like Tilly, and the hard work frets 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


149 


her ; and she doesn’t get enough to eat, and her father’s awful 
poor, and can’t help her.” 

“ Who is her father?” 

“ It’s old Mr. Lane, down-stairs. They say he was a gentleman 
once, and he did something ” — “ did something,” beautiful eu- 
phemism ! — “ and got into trouble. He writes letters for the 
German Jews at Whitechapel when they first come, and for the 
German workmen in the Curtain Road, where they are all fur- 
niture men. He knows a lot of languages, but he’s so dreadful 
poor he can’t give Liz anything.” 

“ My dear, is the whole street full of terrible stories like this ?” 

“Well, we’re poor, and I suppose there’s stories about all of 
us — how we came to be poor.” 

“ There is one thing you’ve not told me, Lotty : how you 
came to know Melenda.” > 

Lotty told that story too. It was a story of two girls’ friend- 
ship for each other — a friendship passing that of David and 
Jonathan, commonly supposed to be the leading case in friend- 
ship ; and how one girl who was strong stood by and worked for 
the other who was weak ; and how for her sake she bore patient- 
ly with tyrannies, petty cheatings, bullyings, and defraudings ; 
and how the two presently found another girl as helpless and 
friendless as themselves, and forced her to remain with them, 
and kept her in the stony path of labor and of self-respect. Quite 
a common story — only a wild-weed kind of story — a story which 
may be picked up in every gutter; so that one wonders why 
Valentine’s heart burned within her, and why the tears crowded 
into her eyes and ran down her cheeks. 

“ You must talk no more, Lotty,” she said, when her story was 
finished. “ They are getting quieter outside and you will be 
able to sleep very soon. There — the grapes are within your 
reach. I shall do very well on the chair. Good-night, my 
dear. Your cough will be better now. Oh ! Lotty, Lotty — I 
never knew there could be such dreadful troubles as these. Poor 
child !” 

“ Don’t cry. Perhaps Tilly will come back.” 

“ We must all be sisters together, my dear, and love each 
other,” said Valentine, with some incoherence, but she had her 
meaning. “ It is all that we can do. There is nothing else that 
will help us all — nothing else. 


160 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


CHAPTER Y. 

A REAL day’s WORK. 

“ If you please, Melenda,” said Valentine, presenting herself 
in the morning after breakfast, “ I am come to do Lotty’s work 
for her to-day.” 

Lotty was with her, looking guilty and rather frightened. 

“ I didn’t ask her, Melenda,” she explained. 

“ She wants a rest,” said Valentine ; “ I mean to do it. May 
I work here with you, Melenda, or shall I work in my own room ? 
It will be quieter for Lotty if I sit here.” 

“ It is only another of their whims and fancies,” said Melenda, 
looking at Valentine as if she were a specimen. “ Give her the 
work, Liz, and let Lotty lie down till she’s tired of her fancy. 
That won’t be very long, and it’ll rest Lotty. Then she’ll put it 
down and go away and forget all about the work and Lotty too. 
They’ve got nothing to do and so they’re full of fancies. Here, 
take the work.” 

She ungraciously motioned Valentine to a bundle of shirts, as 
yet without their button-holes, lying on the table. 

“ Lotty must have rest, Melenda,” Valentine replied, without re- 
ferring to Melenda’s analysis of her own character. “ She wants 
more food and less work. Let her lie down and rest in my room, 
because it’s cooler than this.” She did not add that it was much 
cleaner, much sweeter, and much prettier. “ She shall have my 
dinner and I will have hers, if you like.” 

Lizzie, remembering the ham, chuckled sarcastically. It was 
her only contribution to the conversation. 

“ Don’t be ungracious, Melenda. I have not offered to give 
you anything.” 

“ You sha’n’t, then. There !” Melenda dashed her work 
aside and sprang to her feet in a sudden passion. “ I’ll take 
nothing from you — nothing. Not even your cheek, nor your 
pride. And you shall take nothing from me. Oh ! you com® 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


151 


here and you think you can make me humble because you’ve 
got some money saved and some fine friends, and you’ve been 
brought up like a lady and taught to despise us all, and then 
you think you’ll spite me by taking Lotty from me. You 
sha’n’t have her — no.” She laid her arm round her friend’s 
neck and became immediately soft and tender. “ No, Lotty 
dear ; she wants to part us, but she sha’n’t, shall she ? All 
these years we’ve been friends and worked together, you and 
me, and borne such a lot and never grumbled, and she’s only 
just come. I’ll do your work for you as well as my own, Lotty, 
and welcome, if I have to sit up all night for it. But I can’t get 
ham and grapes for you — work all I know — like she can.” The 
quick tears sprang to her eyes at this consciousness of inferiority. 

“ She doesn’t want to part you and me,” said Lotty, “ I know 
she doesn’t; and you oughtn’t to think I’d ever leave you. 
Don’t be so hard on her, Melenda. Isn’t she your sister and 
all, though she is a young lady ?” 

Melenda dashed the tears from her eyes. Was Lotty herself 
going to desert her ? 

Lizzie went on with her work, her head bent over the button- 
holes as if her friend’s health, and any discussion which might 
arise upon it, was of no concern at all to herself. But she 
looked up now and then furtively, just to see whether Melenda 
were going to catch it or to let some one else catch it. Melenda’s 
tears were but the drops of a short shower which comes before 
a thunderstorm. She stood with kindling eyes and clinched 
fists. She was jealous ; she was so jealous that she would have 
liked nothing better than to have fallen upon poor Valentine and 
— luckily, she did not do it. But she looked so fierce that Valen- 
tine remembered what had been said to Violet about the tearing 
out of ladies’ hair, and wondered if she were going to lose her own. 
She was fierce because she was jealous, and she was jealous be- 
cause Lotty was visibly drawn towards Valentine, and because 
for the first time her own sacrifice of w^ork and time could do 
nothing for her friend compared with the soft words, the grapes, 
and the creature comforts so freely bestowed by the new-comer. 

“ You sha’n’t take her from me,” she cried again, but with 
weakened force. 

“ Don’t, Melenda,” said Lotty. “ I’m not leaving you. Oh I 
why are you so cruel to her ?” 


152 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Melenda gave in. She said nothing, but threw herself into 
her chair and gathered up her work. If Lotty wanted to leave 
her, she must go. That is what her attitude and action meant. 

“ Look at her,” said Valentine, taking advantage of this mo- 
mentary weakness which might mean softening ; “ look at her 
pale face. Let her rest to-day and have good food — to-morrow 
is Sunday. I will go on with her work here, and you may say 
as many hard things to me as you please.” 

“ I tried to do for you, Lotty — I tried my best, I did.” 

“ You did, Melenda dear. Oh, yes, I know. But it’s my back.” 

“ Take her, then,” said Melenda, with a kind of sullen dig- 
nity. “ Give her what you like. Give her hot roast beef and 
potatoes, if you like ; but you sha’n’t give none to me.” 

Valentine led Lotty away, and set her in her own chair with 
a pillow in the back, and placed some books on the table within 
her reach. Then she went back to the workroom. 

Now, as regards the girl who was sick, she, left to herself, 
began first to turn over the leaves of a book which had pictures 
in it. It was a book of poetry. The only poetry Lotty had 
ever learned or read — because in the select academy poetry 
was not part of the curriculum — was the verse contained in the 
hymn-book used by the chapel where, in their palmy days, 
her unfortunate family had worshipped. But it was a great 
many years since she had gone to any church or chapel, and 
the hymns were well-nigh forgotten by this time, and the 
hymn-book lost. Consequently, when first she looked at the 
“reading” and saw that it was verse, she thought it must 
be a hymn-book ; but when she came to read the hymns in it 
and found she could not remember to have read anything like 
them in her own book, and missed all the old tags and phrases, 
she began to fear that Valentine was a heretic of some kind. Of 
the narrow creed which had been preached in that little primi- 
tive Christian church some few rags and tatters remained ; not- 
ably, that everybody who did not hold the catholic faith as ex- 
pounded by the Primitive Christians was in a perilous state ; 
and that to be a Papist, or an Anglican, or a Congregationalist, 
or a Presbyterian, or a Unitarian was to invite certain destruc- 
tion, while even to continue in the twilight of Baptistdom or 
Methodism was to incur great risks. It is odd how, when one’s 
early faith is forgotten, the narrowness of it may remain, like 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


153 


the crust in the bottle after the wine has been poured out. So 
Lotty closed the book, in confusion of spirit, remembering some- 
thing vague about falling from sound doctrines, and bethinking 
herself of some half-forgotten phrase about the wiles of Satan. 
These wiles had never been presented to her in a prettier form 
than in this dainty volume with its pictures and its poetry. 

The ignorance, if you come to think of it, of London work- 
girls and, very likely, of workgirls everywhere, is colossal. It 
passeth understanding. They have no books in their rooms, 
not one single book, not even a Bible or a Prayer-Book or a 
hymn-book — single-room lodgers never have any books ; they 
read nothing at all, neither books, nor newspapers, nor journals, 
nor magazines, nor tracts. They have no knowledge of litera- 
ture in any form. They hear nothing of the outer world. The 
men, for their part, may meet and discuss things with some 
show of knowledge, because they sometimes read a newspaper, 
but the girls do not ; therefore they have not the least under- 
standing of what is going on anywhere, and in all the art, sci- 
ence, and knowledge which we call the inheritance of the ages, 
they do not own the smallest share. Since, then, they are as 
ignorant of everything as the inhabitants of the Solomon Isl- 
ands, without being anything like so well fed and so comforta- 
ble or so pleasantly clothed, would it not have been far better 
for all these girls if they had been born in that archipelago in- 
stead of Christian England? There at least they would have 
no shirts to stitch if there were none to wear, and they would 
have plenty to eat, even if it were only dried heche-de-mer, and 
there would be sunshine and warmth for all. 

Two of these girls had been educated at board schools, where 
they had reached the third or fourth standard. If you wish, 
therefore, to know the extent of their possible knowledge, read 
the third and fourth standard books, and remember that they 
have already forgotten almost all they ever learned from those 
encyclopaedic works. And if they are ignorant of book-learning 
they are equally ignorant of all that is concerned with industry, 
wages, and trades. They have not the least idea that they could 
ever better their condition ; they do not understand that they 
might rebel, or strike, or combine, or do anything for them- 
selves at all. They cannot go into service because they know 
nothing, not even how to lay a table or how to dust a room ; 


154 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


they cannot emigrate because they would he of no use in any 
colony ; they can only sew, and like the steam-engines which are 
kept going, till they fall to pieces of old age and rust, on coal 
and water, the sewing-girls are just as simply kept at working- 
power till something goes wrong with the wheels, on bread-and- 
butter and cold tea. 

Their ignorance, however, though it was colossal, did not make 
them unhappy, nor did it humiliate them. The great Giant Ig- 
norance has one good point : he is, in his way, good-natured ; he 
never suffers his victims to be unhappy or humiliated by reason of 
their subjection. Melenda, indeed, thought herself possessed of 
extraordinary knowledge, as well as of immense sagacity. 

Presently Lotty began to look about the room and to realize 
slowly the way in which young ladies live — always in easy- 
chairs, soft and low, with flowers on the table and grapes in the 
cupboard, curtains to the window, books on a shelf, pictures on 
the wall, fans, scent on the mantelshelf, and laced handker- 
chiefs. How would it be to live like this always, and never do 
any work ; never to be hungry, and never to have a pain in the 
back ? While she was thinking of this, and wondering vaguely 
and asking herself if Melenda were right in saying that Valen- 
tine would soon go away and forget all about them, her eyes 
closed and she dropped off to sleep, lulled by the unusual sense 
of rest, freedom from pain, and physical ease. She had, besides, 
a great quantity of arrears to make up in the matter of sleep, 
and the morning was very hot, and there was a most delicious 
sense of coolness in the room and the unaccustomed fragrance 
of flowers, all of which reasons may serve for her excuse. 

The making of button-holes is one of those occupations in 
which it is impossible to take an artistic interest. She who 
sews them is not sustained by a sense of beauty, because when 
you have flnished and turned out your button-hole you cannot 
possibly call it beautiful ; it is not a thing, for instance, which 
you can hold up and watch while the sunlight plays among the 
stitches and the light and shade set off their graceful curves ; 
besides, you have got to go straight on to make another as soon 
as one is flnished. Nothing sustains the workwoman but the re- 
flection that, though it takes a good many stitches to make a 
button-hole, so many dozen button-holes make so many pence. 

The making of button-holes, however, is not difficult for a 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


155 


good needlewoman. Valentine received a few simple instruc- 
tions from Lizzie, and then, taking Lotty’s place on the bed, she 
began her work. The button-holes were for shirts, but these 
were of a coarse and common kind, made of rough material, for 
exportation very likely — shirts warranted to be as uncomfortable 
and as rasping as the monastic hair shirt. In fact, I think it is 
very likely they were invented before the Eeformation for the 
use of monks and modern eremites, and then only for the strict- 
est and most profoundly miserable Order of Self-tormentors. 
They are now, I believe, used for the converts (previously shirt- 
less) made by the missionaries. And the story of “ My First 
Shirt ” has yet to be written. So enterprising has always been 
the spirit of British commerce ! 

Valentine was clever with her needle, and could embroider as 
beautifully as Penelope. Unfortunately she was as slow and as 
deliberate as that lady-in-waiting, and loved to linger over her 
work, and look at it, and think about it, and at times unstitch 
some of it. Therefore she soon perceived that Melenda turned 
out button-holes about five times, and Lizzie about three times, 
as fast as herself. Then she made haste to imitate them, and 
addressed her mind to the question of rapidity rather than of 
beauty in her work. 

No one spoke ; there was no other sound in the room than 
the click of thimbles and the rustling of the stuff. Valentine’s 
thoughts wandered from her work, which was monotonous. 
This, she reflected, was the room in which three girls slept, 
worked, and lived. They all three lay on one bed, that on 
which she was sitting. It was a broad wooden bed, with a hard 
mattress a good deal depressed in the middle, and neither 
feather bed nor springs. The hot July sun was pouring in at 
the window, where the yellow blind, which might once have 
been white and could no longer draw up, was pinned back so as 
to leave a triangle of sunshine. Valentine sat in the shade, and 
thought she had never in her life seen so many motes dancing 
in the sun. The room was neglected, and wanted cleaning hor- 
ribly ; the grate was rusty ; there was not a book in it, or a 
magazine, or a paper — nothing to read ; there were no pictures 
on the wall ; there were no ornaments of any kind ; the plas- 
ter of the ceiling had fallen down in one corner exposing the 
laths ; there was no carpet ; the two or three cooking utensils 


156 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


which lay within the fender seemed to have been long unused. 
A place, it seemed, built with intention for the abode of grind- 
ing, wretched, hopeless poverty ; a place exactly fitted for the 
kind of work, where there was no prospect of improvement, 
however zealously one worked, or of any higher pay or more 
regular employment. 

Valentine forgot that the girls were young, and that even 
to workgirls there is hope, while they are young, that these 
troubles will pass away somehow, and give place to some un- 
known kind of joy. 

“ Well,” asked Lizzie, pertly, “ isn’t it good enough for you ?” 

It was at nine o’clock that Valentine began to work. At ten, 
or thereabouts, she became aware that she must stop, get up, 
and straighten herself. She did so. Melenda worked on like a 
machine, and took no notice at all. The other girl looked and 
smiled grimly. “ I thought you’d give in soon,” she said, 
“ Lotty has to lie down every half-hour.” 

“ I haven’t given in,” Valentine replied, indignantly. 

Then she sat down and went on again. 

In another hour her head began to reel, and she felt giddy. 
If two hours of button-holes produced such an effect, what 
would the whole day do for her ? She laid aside her work, and 
looked up ashamed. By this time the room was very hot, al- 
though the door and window were both open, and from the 
street below, baked by the midday sun, there was wafted up- 
ward a mingled perfume or incense, made up of things lying 
in the street ; of the industries in the houses — such as the press- 
ing of cloth, which is a hot and steamy smell ; or the burning 
of leather straps, which is insidious, and makes one feel sick ; 
with the smell from a fried-fish shop not far off — this is a smell 
which makes one sad ; and the stale reek of yesterday’s tobacco 
and beer — this is a smell which makes one sorry — from the pub- 
lic-house opposite. 

“ Do you do this every day ?” she asked, foolishly, because 
she knew very well that they did. 

“ Every day,” said Lizzie — Melenda still taking no notice — 
“and all day long. Don’t you like it ?” 

“ Don’t you ever stop to read, or talk, or sing, or something ?” 

“ Sing ! Oh, Lord !” Lizzie replied, with infinite contempt. 
“ Stop to sing •?” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


157 


All day long,” Valentine repeated, “ and never any holiday?” 

‘‘ Only when there’s no work. Fine ladies never think how 
they’d like it themselves ” — Lizzie, too, was able to borrow some- 
thing from the indignant Sam. “ Ain’t it nice to make cheap 
things ?” 

Valentine took up her work again and went on, wondering 
how long life could be endured if she were doomed to spend it 
among button-holes. Then she tried to imagine herself the 
lifelong companion of Melenda, and altogether such a one as 
Lizzie, and that she had never done anything else and never 
known any other kind of existence ; and she wondered what 
she would be thinking about. But her imagination failed her, 
and refused to pretend any such thing, partly because the things 
worn by poor Lizzie were not nice to look at. 

“ Do you never do anything at all ?” she asked, presently, 
“ except work all day and walk the streets in the evening ?” 

“Some girls go to the Britannier when they’ve got the 
money, or anybody treats them. I’ve never got the money, and 
I’m not going to be treated by anybody, no more than Melenda. 
There used to be the Grecian as well, but they’ve turned that 
into the Salvation Army. And there’s the Theatre of Varieties 
in Bitfield Street, there’s Collins’s at Islington, and there’s the 
Foresters in the Cambridge Road. Some girls go to public- 
houses and drink with the men. We won’t, Melenda and me. 
There’s talk of a girl’s club, but — well, there’s nothing else to 
do but to walk the streets at night, and you’d walk them, too, 
if you’d been sitting at work all day.” 

“ And Sundays ?” 

“We lie abed on Sunday mornings, and go out in the afternoons.” 

“ And on wet and cold evenings ?” 

“ Then we sit at home, and go to bed early to save candle 
and fire.” 

“ Do you never go to church ?” 

“ Not likely !” — Liz lifted her ragged skirt. “ In this ?” 

“ Don’t waste your time chattering, Lizzie,” said Melenda. 
Then there was silence. 

Soon after noon Valentine was seized with an overwhelming 
desire to get up and jump, or run, or leap over something. 

“ I must jump !” she cried, and did it. 

“ That’s fidgets,” said Lizzie. “ I used to have them, but I’m 
used to it now.” ^ 


158 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


The attack presently yielded to violent measures, for fidgets 
are like cramp, and must be dealt with resolutely. In reading 
of convicts chained to each other, and obliged to sleep side by 
side, I have often thought how dreadful and intolerable a thing 
it would be if one of them were to get an attack of fidgets and 
not be able to spring out of bed. Then Valentine was going to 
sit down again, when Melenda interposed. Lotty, she said, al- 
ways rested in the middle of the day. She had better do the 
same and get her dinner. 

“ Am I not to have Lotty’s ?” 

“ Don’t be silly,” said Melenda. As if you could make a 
dinner off bread and tea! What time did you generally have 
your dinner ?” 

“ At half-past seven.” 

“ That’s supper. What did you have before that ?” 

“ There was tea at five.” 

And before that?” 

“ Luncheon at half-past one.” Valentine began to feel guilty 
of most reckless gluttony, 

“ Oh 1 And what did you have at all of them ?” 

Valentine confessed with shame to meat at luncheon and at 
dinner, and possibly at breakfast. 

“ There,” said Melenda, “ it’s ridiculous. You can’t have din- 
ner like Lizzie and me. Go away and get something to eat, and 
give it to Lotty if you like. We don’t eat much here, but we’re 
independent.” 

Valentine obeyed, and the other two girls went on working 
in silence. 

Presently there was heard proceeding from Valentine’s room 
a most curious and remarkable sound. Nothing less than the 
laughter of two girls, a thing which had never happened in the 
house in the memory of its residents. Lizzie looked up, curious 
and envious ; Melenda suspicious and jealous. 

“ They’re laughing,” said Lizzie. “ What are they laughing for ?” 

“ She’s made Lotty laugh,” said Melenda, who had never even 
tried to work such a miracle. “ What’s she said to her ? Lotty 
wouldn’t never laugh at us.” 

The laughing continued, and Lizzie’s curiosity increased, and 
Melenda’s face grew cloudier and darker. 

The old lady in the room below, sitting by herself with her 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


159 


funeral trimmings in lier hands, thought somebody must have 
gone mad. Who but mad people and children ever laughed in 
Ivy Lane ? But the laughing still went on, and her thoughts flew 
back to a time long, long ago, when the poor old thing herself 
laughed all day long — living in the Fool’s Paradise which sees 
nothing around or before but a luminous and sunlit haze. No- 
body would ever laugh, I suppose, if that haze were to be sud- 
denly removed. Happy Paradise ! Happy fools who live in it ! 
And all to end in the workhouse during the winter, and such sew- 
ing as could be got in the summer from Mr. Croquemort of Beth- 
nal Green. Presently she could bear it no longer, this poor old 
woman, but got up and put down her work, and stealthily crept 
out of her room and crawled half-way up the narrow stairs, her 
neck craned, her eyes glaring, her ear turned, to see what they 
were laughing at, and to hear what they were saying. She neither 
heard nor saw, but a strange emotion fell upon her withered old 
soul. The laughter of girls — light-hearted laughter! — she re- 
membered how, long, long ago — fifty years ago — when she was 
nineteen or twenty, two young girls sat in a carriage on a race- 
course, and laughed with handsome and gallant young gentle- 
men, while the pink champagne foamed and sparkled in the long 
glasses, and the gypsy-woman stood at the carriage-wheel, and 
the girls crossed her palms with gold. Then that old woman, 
with something like a sob, felt in her pocket and found two- 
pence, and she went across the street to the Adelaide and had 
a glass of gin. After this she returned to her own room and 
fell asleep, and, perhaps, dreamed of that long past happy time 
of unthinking folly. 

As for the laughing, it was over nothing at all but the cook- 
ing of the dinner, at which Valentine showed herself so awkward 
and so ignorant. Why, she knew nothing, not even the price of 
potatoes, or how to buy them, and she had got the very dearest 
kind of beef, and such an immense quantity, and Lotty had to 
tell her everything, even to the rolling up of her sleeves ; but 
she would do it all herself, and so they both laughed. And the 
business was no doubt as comic as the making of a pudding on 
the stage, which is, we know, always most effective business. 

And then, with the laughter, the other girls heard a hissing 
and sputtering, which lasted ten minutes or thereabouts, and was 
accompanied by an extraordinary fragrance, of the kind which 


160 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


used in the old days to delight those dear, simple immortal gods, 
so easily pleased — the incense, or perfume, namely, of meat, 
roasted, seethed, or fried. 

Then Lizzie sat holt upright, and said, solemnly, with pale 
cheek, and that far-oJd look in her eyes which a painter might 
take for a yearning after things invisible and unattainable : 

“ Melenda, they’ve got — it’s — it is — STEAK !” 

“ What does it matter,” said Melenda, “ what they’ve got ?” 

Lizzie was silent for another half minute. But the fragrance 
mounted to her brain and made her giddy, and filled her with a 
craving for food. 

“ Oh, Melenda, I’m so hungry.” 

“ That comes of taking things. If you hadn’t eaten that ham 
two days ago, you wouldn’t have been hungry now.” 

There was once a foolish Greek person, whose history used to 
be read in the “ Analecta Minora,” when that work was put in 
the hands of schoolboys. He had a theory that horses ate too 
much, and he gradually reduced the rations of corn for his own 
horse, with a view to making that animal live upon nothing, and be- 
come perfectly independent of food. Just as he was upon the point 
of success the creature died. Melenda held much the same views. 

“ For shame,” she added ; “ where’s your independence, Liz 2” 
Just what the Greek person might have said to the horse. 

“ Bother independence,” replied Lizzie, replying in the very 
words of the horse, “ I am hungry.” 

“ If you eat beefsteak to-day,” said Melenda, “ there’ll be 
nothing but bread and cold tea to-morrow and — ” 

But Lizzie was gone. The perfume of the beef drew her as 
with ropes, and she could not choose but go. 

In Valentine’s room there was a white cloth spread and the 
dinner just ready, and Lotty, with fiushed cheeks, helping to 
serve it, and both of them laughing. 

“Come in, Lizzie,” cried Valentine, gayly ; “there is plenty 
for all of us. Will you ask Melenda ?” 

“ She won’t come. Don’t you go — she might fly in your face.” 

Valentine hesitated. Then she sat down. During dinner 
they talked and laughed again — actually laughed and made lit- 
tle jokes together. When had Lotty laughed lasU 

Dinner done, and things washed and cleared away, they went 
back into the other room. Melenda was still at work, dogged 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


161 


and stern, witli hard-set mouth and resolute eyes, sick with the 
yearning that the smell .of the roasted meat had caused, but stub- 
born and obstinate. 

“ Melenda,” said Valentine, “ can you live on bread and tea?” 

“ What’s that to you ? I’ve got to.” 

“ Oh,” she cried, “ it is shameful.” 

“ Then mend it,” said Melenda, fiercely ; ‘‘ mend it if you can. 
If you can’t, let us alone to hear it as well as we can. We can 
hear it, can’t we, Liz ?” 

Liz turned her great eyes to Valentine. 

“Can you mend it?” she asked. “It is very hard to bear. 
Can you mend it ?” 

“ Oh ! I can do nothing to mend it. And Melenda will not 
let me do anything to help it.” 

“ I thought you were going to do Lotty’s work.” 

“ She’s done more already than Lotty used to do in a whole 
day,” said Liz. “ Let her rest a little, Melenda.” 

“No, no,” said Valentine, “I shall do my day’s work.” 

The slow minutes passed slowly. Through the open window 
there came the murmur and the hum of Hoxton Street and St. 
John’s Road. It was rather a sleepy murmur, because Hoxton 
is not a noisy place, and there are few omnibuses and fewer cabs, 
and very few carts and wagons. Presently Valentine felt as if 
they were all three set down in some far-off place of torture, in 
an undescribed circle of the Inferno, condemned to work at but- 
ton-holes without ceasing — button-holes for shirts which would 
fit nobody — like the unhappy damsels who have to fill sieves 
with water, and to spend their whole time — they’ve got all the 
time there is — in pouring it in and seeing it run out again — a 
most tedious employment, and, one cannot help thinking, with 
submission and respect to the court, a foolish punishment, and 
one can only hope that they get their Sundays at least free, in 
which case they are no worse off than Melenda and her friends. 

Presently Valentine began aloud to shape out a little apologue 
which occurred to her. 

“Once upon a time,” she said, “there were three poor girls, 
and there was a wicked witch. The witch was always making 
spells for the raising of storms and bringing diseases upon good 
people and thwarting the work of honest people. For use in her 
charms she wanted a continual supply of button-holes ; but why 


162 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


button-holes are good for magic I cannot tell you, only I believe 
that if you work at them long enough you can raise the — the 
Devil. Anyhow, I know that they are most invaluable for con- 
juring, incantations, making people mad and miserable, and all 
kinds of sorcery. The difficulty with this witch was to find 
people who would sew the button-holes for her, because it is hor- 
rible work and tedious work, that no one would do if there was 
anything else to bje done, and because it is work which by the 
laws of the country — but I think this law is an unjust one — is 
forbidden to be paid for at the rate of more than a farthing 
apiece, so that the fastest worker cannot earn more than a shil- 
ling a day at it. For a long time the witch looked about in vain. 
But at last she found three girls who were all so desperately poor 
that they were ready to take any kind of work that was offered 
them. It was a very heartless and wicked country, in which the 
rich ladies took no thought for poor girls, and did not interfere 
as they ought to have done, or insist upon finding them good 
work and fair wages, as of course they do in our own country — 
in England. So she offered them the work. She did not per- 
suade them with honeyed words. She did not say ‘ My dears, 
if you will come and make button-holes for me you shall have 
roast beef and pudding every day, with money to go to all kinds 
of beautiful places.’ Not at all. She came scowling and curs- 
ing, and she threw the work in the middle; of them, and she said : 

‘ You girls ; take the work or leave it. If you leave it, you will 
starve ; if you take it, you shall taste meat once a week — on Sun- 
days, perhaps — and live for six days on bread-and-butter and 
tea. You shall work all day long except Sundays ; you shall not 
have any holidays ; you shall waste and throw away in this dread- 
ful work all your youth and beauty ; you shall not know any 
pleasure or rest or fulness ; you shall go hungry in body and 
soul. Don’t think the rich ladies will interfere or help you. 
They care nothing for you — ’ ” 

‘‘They don’t,” said Melenda, now become interested in the 
story. 

“ ‘ They have been told about you till they are sick of hearing 
the story ; but they will do nothing for you. So take it or leave 
it.’ This is what the dreadful old witch said.” 

“ Of course they took the work,” said Melenda. 

“ Of course they did ; and of course they grew every day 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


163 


hungrier and more hopeless. And one of them was weak, and 
she gets weaker. Then the other two worked harder to make 
up. But they couldn’t quite make up ; and one grew more mis- 
erable, but she worked on still ” — Lizzie bent her head — ‘‘and one 
grew harder and more angry, and she worked the hardest of all.” 

“Very fine talk,” said Melenda, with an intelligent sniff. 
“ They’ve taught you how to talk. You talk as well as Sam, 
almost.” 

“ But I haven’t done yet. Suppose a messenger was to come 
from some rich lady to these girls — a girl like themselves — and 
suppose she was to offer them lighter work and better pay. Sup- 
pose she was to offer them, out of her own abundance, help of 
any kind — ” 

“ The girls wouldn’t be fools enough to take it,” said Melenda. 
“ They want justice. That’s what Sam says. ‘ Take your char- 
ity away,’ he says, ‘ and give us justice.’ ” 

“ This lady would say, through her messenger, ‘ I cannot get 
justice. I am quite powerless to get justice for girls in the 
clutches of black wizards and witches. But I can help you three.’ 
Melenda, suppose her messenger brought this message, would 
you send her away ?” 

“You can talk,” said Melenda, “but you won’t make me take 
your charity.” 

At four o’clock Lotty made some tea and brought it to them, 
Melenda not regarding. Then they went on working again in 
silence. By this time Valentine’s fingers ached so that the 
needle travelled slowly, and her arms ached so that she could 
hardly hold the stuff in her lap, and her back, though she was as 
strong as most girls, ached with the stooping, and her head ached 
with the heat and closeness of the room, and her fingers were sore 
with handling the coarse material of which the shirts are made, 
and her eyes were red and inflamed. 

But she would not give in. 

Melenda was working as fiercely and as fast as if it were seven 
in the morning, and she had only just begun, and then after an 
excellent and invigorating breakfast. Lizzie, with the quiet, dull 
patience she habitually gave to the work, but with much greater 
discontent, for she had now tasted some of the joys of a lady’s 
life. It meant, she perceived, a pretty room to live in, with soft 
dresses and gloves, and your hair done beautifully, and beefsteak 


164 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


and cocoa for dinner. “You ought,” said the gentleman she 
knew, “ to live like a lady, and have nothing to do all day but to 
let me paint your eyes.” And when Valentine went away, which 
would he very soon, there would he no more beefsteak. 

My brothers, think of it : the mind of man cannot conceive a 
greater temptation than this, when a girl half starved and robbed 
of joy and doomed to the misery of work the most hopeless and 
the most miserable, perceives that the unattainable — the life of 
physical comfort and material well-being, the life she has always 
longed for, the life that it is natural to desire — is actually within 
her reach and to be had — just by signing her name to a little 
piece of parchment, and giving that agreement — of course after 
it has been duly stamped and entered at Somerset House — to 
the Devil. 

About half-past eight Lotty came in, refreshed after her long 
day’s rest and sleep. “ Oh !” she said, tearing the work from 
Valentine’s hands ; “ oh ! Melenda, how could you let her go on?” 

For Valentine’s cheek was pale and her eyes were swimming, 
and now she looked dazed, and trembled as she sat. 

“ I will not give in,” she cried ; hut she did, because she broke 
into sobbing and crying, “ Oh, Lotty — is it every day — all day 
— all day long, like this ?” 

“ She would do it,” said Melenda. “ Get a little water, Liz ! 
Quick ! Don’t stand gaping ! It’s the heat of the day. Wet her 
temples. That’s right. Don’t cry, Polly. I knew you couldn’t 
do it. Get something out of her cupboard for her, Lotty. Some 
of them grapes. What can you expect of a girl like this trying 
to do a day’s work like Liz and me ?” 

Melenda’s good-temper came hack to her when once she had 
proved her superiority. Why, when you came to try a real day’s 
work, where was Polly, after all ? Nowhere. 

“You look after her, Lotty.” She went on with her work, for 
there was still a quarter of an hour or so of daylight ; hut Liz- 
zie threw down hers. As for Valentine, it was only for a few 
moments that the hysteria held her, and she sat up again recov- 
ered and a little ashamed of herself for giving in at the end. 
But — what a day ! 

It was Saturday evening, and the lane was noisier than usual. 
Presently Melenda herself thought she might stop, and they be- 
gan to put things away for Sunday. It may be proved from re- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


165 


ligions statistics that button-hole makers, though they never go 
to church, are more open to conviction on Sabbatic doctrines 
than any other class of persons. They would even like a Sab- 
batic week or a Sabbatic year — that is, a whole week or even a 
whole year of Sabbaths. 

“ I must sing,” said Valentine. “ I am so tired, and I ache so 
much that I must sing. Do you never sing, you people ? How 
can you live without ? I will sing to you.” 

There must be some recreation after work. Melenda and 
Lizzie got theirs by walking the streets ; Lotty hers by resting ; 
Valentine tried to find hers by singing. 

Below in the street, the people were all outside their houses, 
gathered in groups talking and enjoying the cool air of twilight. 
To these people there happened the most wonderful thing in all 
their experience. Suddenly there struck upon all ears the voice 
of one who sang — the voice was like unto the sound of a 
silver clarion. The song they heard went straight to all hearts 
by reason of the air, for they were careless of the words ; it 
made their pulses quicken and brightened their eyes, and the 
parliament of wonien was hushed, and the feet of all were 
drawn towards the house, and even the children ceased their 
shouting, and sat still to hear. For such singing had they never 
heard and never dreamed of. What Valentine sang, in fact, was 
a ditty called the “ Kerry Dance.” 

While she sang there came down the street, not arm in arm, 
because they were deadly enemies, yet walking together because 
they loved each other, a certain assistant priest — formerly he 
would have been called the curate — and a certain young general 
practitioner, medicine-man, doctor, a person skilled in physic, 
anatomy, botany, biology, and all kinds of learned things. Both 
were young as yet, and poor. I know not which of the two was 
the more pragmatic, pedantic, and conceited ; whether the assist- 
ant priest, who professed to know the secret ways of the Al- 
mighty, and pretended to be intrusted with the most tremendous 
powers, and measured law, order, and humanity by the little 
tape of his little sect — he was a Ritualist person and impudently 
called his sect “ the Church ;” or he who knew all about bac- 
teria and mikrokokkos and evolution and protoplasm, and didn’t 
want any Church at all, and saw no soft place anywhere in his 
stupendous intellect where he could possibly want any religion. 


166 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Oh, Lord !” cried the doctor, who only believed in himself, 
and therefore generally called upon the Lord. 

“ Dear me !” said the assistant priest, who didn’t believe in 
himself at all, and therefore swore by his own name. 

“ This is very wonderful,” said the doctor, listening to the 
voice. 

“ Oh ! To think of it, 

Oh ! To dream of it.” 

sang Valentine. 

“This,” said the assistant priest, “is the most wonderful 
thing I have ever heard. What a voice !” 

He left the doctor and followed the voice up the stairs, and 
found himself unexpectedly in a room filled with four girls, at 
sight of whom he turned and fled, conscious of intrusion. 

But the people in the street were clapping their hands. 

Said Lotty, “ Oh ! it’s lovely. But they want another.” 

Valentine laughed and sang another. The singing quite re- 
stored her. This time she sang “ Phillis is my only joy.” 

The people held their breath while they listened. When it 
was over Valentine shut down the window, to show that the per- 
formance was finished. 

“ It’s all very well,” said Melenda, once more conscious of in- 
feriority ; “ any one could do it if she had been taught.” 

“ Any one,” said Valentine. 

“But, oh !” said Lotty ; “ all the same it’s wonderful.” 

“ There were four girls in the room,” said the assistant priest, 
“ and one was lying on the bed. And the one who was singing 
looked somehow — but it was rather dark — like a lady. I felt 
I had no business there, so I came away.” 

“ Of course she was a lady,” said the doctor. “ Nobody but 
a lady could sing like that. Well ; I hope she’ll come again. 
What a mistake you fellows made when you turned the women 
out of your choirs. By Jove ! That girl’s singing would actu- 
ally make the men go to church !” 

What the assistant priest replied I shall not report. As he 
lost his temper every day with the doctor — they met every day 
— it would not be fair to set down in cold blood the things he 
habitually said on these occasions. One may, however, record 
briefly that he had now began with, “ I do think” — which is the 
London clerical equivalent for a well-known Yorkshire idiom; 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


167 


sometimes lie added, “ I must say.” But that was only when 
the controversy raged long and bitterly, g-nd when this — or its 
equivalent in nautical language, or the bargee dialect, or the 
London patois — was absolutely necessary. 


CHAPTER VI. 

BEHIND ST. Luke’s. 

Oh, Claude !” Valentine opened her door and came out to 
meet him when he knocked on the Sunday morning. “ I never 
thought I should be so happy to see anybody ! And you are 
ten minutes late, sir. To be sure, you have not been all alone 
in Ivy Lane for three days.” 

“The place is truly awful, Valentine. It looks even worse 
to-day than when we came here with Violet.” 

Certainly Ivy Lane has a way of looking more mournfully 
shabby and dirty on Sunday mornings in summer than on any 
other morning in the week ; perhaps this is because there are 
more potsherds, mouldy crusts, bruised and decaying fruit, bits 
of paper, cabbage stalks, potato peelings, broken pipes, plugs of 
tobacco, and other drift and wreckage of life lying about on that 
than on any other day. It was already past eleven, but very few 
people were stirring, and no one had yet taken a broom in hand 
or thrown a bucket of water over the flags. Lizzie and Melenda 
were not yet dressed ; Lotty was lying on Valentine’s bed in 
restful ease, not asleep, because it is foolish to sleep in moments 
free from pain. She had a book in her hands, but her thoughts 
were wandering away to the old times of the happy days in the 
little shop before the custom fell off ; and she was a child again 
with poor impatient Tilly, and her father was proud of the shop, 
and her mother was happy in her husband and her children. 
For what sins, far back in the third or fourth generation of un- 
known and obscure ancestors, had Fate been so hard upon this 
poor draper of Goswell Road and his family ? 

“ You are still alive, Valentine, and no one has — ” 

“ No one has offered me the least incivility, Claude, except, of 
course, Melenda, who is still unforgiving.” 

She looked as bright and as fresh as a young girl of twenty 


1C8 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


can be expected to look. Her long day’s work had left no trace 
behind except a little paleness of cheek, and perhaps a little shad- 
ing below the eyes ; standing among those dingy houses in her 
youth and grace and beauty she looked as Aphrodite herself 
might have shown had she imitated the Father of the Gods when 
he went visiting the slums, and called upon Baucis and Philemon 
in their squalid hut. She had been waiting for Claude a whole 
half-hour, quite ready for him, and “with her ‘things’ on” — 
pretty, poetical, feminine locution ! To mere man, a woman’s 
dress is the setting and frame of beauty, the mysterious accom- 
paniment of loveliness, a thing to be regarded with wonder and 
respect; but to superior woman it is but a collection of “ things.” 
Such is the philosophic superiority of the sex, and so readily do 
they despise mere external trappings and outward show. 

“It is a dreadful place,” Claude repeated. “ I am amazed 
that you dared to come here. Can you be happy in it ?” 

A most weak and feeble question. What is the use of asking 
a girl who is young, strong, beautiful, and relieved from the 
necessity of work, if she can make herself happy anywhere, and 
especially where she is entirely free ? No one knows, until he 
has witnessed it, the happiness which the young lady, even of 
the best-regulated mind, feels when her movements are free and 
uncontrolled ; and to think that, with their liberty yet to gain, 
women will fight for such vain shadows as female suffrage and 
a seat on a school board ! Besides which, Valentine was going 
to spend a whole morning in the company of a young man 
charming in many respects, but especially in this, that he be- 
lieved himself to be her brother. 

Happiness, again, is so uncertain a quality. Nobody, except a 
newly engaged couple, is often consciously happy. We do not 
recognize happiness until it has vanished ; and then we lament, 
yet with pride, as those who have entertained a god unawares. 
A truly remarkable thing that all the world should ardently de- 
sire a possession which nobody understands until it has vanished. 
A certain ancient philosopher, after he had made an impromptu 
conundrum, or a double acrostic, upon this paradox, went away 
and elaborated a treatise, now happily lost, on the “ Folly of Pray- 
ing for Happiness.” I suppose that, even on this Sunday morn- 
ing, Valentine would hardly have confessed to perfect happiness. 

“ I am going,” she said, “ to take you for a walk. There are 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


169 


no parks in Hoxton, and there are no gardens or anything. I 
suppose there is no place in all London so far from any open 
space as Ivy Lane. So we can only walk about the streets. 
But when we are tired, I know of a beautiful churchyard — I 
found it the other day — where we can sit down and rest. A 
good many of the people are in bed still, because it is Sunday 
morning. Lying in bed saves breakfast ; and, besides, it rests 
them. They get up, I believe, somewhere about dinner-time. 
Melenda and Lizzie are in bed now, for instance. However, we 
shall find some of the people in the streets.” 

For her own part Valentine had very little desire to study the 
People — with a capital initial. She came to Hoxton solely in 
order to get acquainted with the members of her own particular 
family, the Monuments, and especially with Melenda Monu- 
ment. But she was naturally curious about the new, strange life 
she found there. Curiosity^has led to a good many remarkable 
things : to the conversation with the serpent and the tasting of 
the apple ; to the breaking of all laws — human and divine, moral 
and meddlesome, just and unjust ; to the acquisition of all the 
knowledge that has been acquired, and to the growth and de- 
velopment of sympathy. She was by no means a philanthropist. 
Her interests, like those of all healthy-minded young people, 
were as yet chiefiy confined to those whom she knew and loved. 
Her affections as yet limited her sympathies ; she had no desire 
to deduce and to lay down general laws concerning the manners 
and customs or the instincts of what we feelingly call the “ Lower 
Classes” — philanthropy does sometimes cover such a beautiful 
contempt for its objects. She just began by being interested 
in a group of three working-girls, from whom she was rapidly 
learning the one lesson most worth learning, namely, that the 
People are, in all essentials, exactly the same as the Other Peo- 
ple. There are not, in fact, in this any more than in any other 
country, two races, but one ; and the best way of acquiring an 
exhaustive and scientific knowledge of that one race is to sit be- 
fore a looking-glass for a long time and look at it. This is really 
a most valuable maxim, and the sooner it is generally accepted 
and acted upon the better for everybody, particularly for those 
who are ridden by fads, fancies, and Old Men of the Sea. Women, 
for some unknown reason, understand this law better than men, 
and it is the cause not only why they make better nurses, but 
8 


170 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


also why they are harder in their dealings with the poor and needy. 
Those who love sweet sentimentality and the pleasures of imagi- 
nation should not try to understand too many laws of humanity. 

Valentine was brimful of things to talk about; but when a 
lady lives altogether in one room, she cannot very well use it as 
a salon. This difficulty is generally, by the ladies of Ivy Lane, 
on the evening when they are “ at home,” overcome by receiv- 
ing their friends upon the curbstone or by sitting on the door- 
steps. Valentine, perhaps in ignorance of this custom, preferred 
to wander about the streets, and led Claude forth into labyrin- 
thine Hoxton. The city has been, it is true, laid out something 
like an American town, with parallel streets and cross streets at 
right angles ; but it has happily preserved some of the old wind- 
ing ways which were formerly lanes between hedgerows, across 
fields, and among orchards of plum, cherry, apple, and pear. 
The lanes remain — some think that Daedalus once lived in Hox- 
ton, about the time when Pythagoras was teaching at Cambridge 
— ^but the hedgerows are gone, and houses and shops have taken 
their place. Valentine piloted Claude among the winding courts, 
but first she led him into Hoxton Street, where on a Sunday 
morning there is always a great market held and all the shops 
are open. The roadway is covered with the carts of costers, 
and the pavement is crowded with those who stroll idly along, 
content to be doing nothing except to lean against something 
solid, pipe in mouth and hands in pocket. Valentine led the 
way with the air of an old acquaintance — a two-days^-old ac- 
quaintance — and as one, therefore, competent to become a cice- 
rone. She showed Claude the streets branching right and left, 
those where every room in every house is a workshop as well as a 
living-room and a sleeping-room, and those where every house con- 
tains a workshop. There are no other kinds of houses in Hoxton 
city. In one place she showed him a mysterious court, paved and 
broad and clean, consisting of little two-storied houses inhabited 
by cobblers, repairers of umbrellas, sign-writers, feather-finishers, 
and the like, which is protected and beautified at either end by 
most magnificent iron gates, solid and splendid, richly worked, and 
fit for a duke’s palace. How did these gates come to Hoxton ? 

Presently, in their walk, they came to a church, and they 
looked into it. The morning service was half-way through. 
Wonderful spectacle t There was not a single man in the 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


m 


church, except the two clergymen, the choir, and the church- 
wardens ; yet everything set out in readiness for a full and en- 
thusiastic congregation of the faithful, with a lovely row of 
lighted candles in staring brass candlesticks where no lights 
were wanted, mocking the sunshine which poured through the 
windows, quite an extensive choir in surplices, and two officiat- 
ing clergymen, and in one snug corner a place provided with a 
curtain and a chair — the whole forming the simple properties 
necessary for a nice little confessional. Sad indeed that Eng- 
lishmen should be found to scoff and to stand upright and to 
think for themselves, and to speak words of derision about this 
innocent little piece of furniture ! Outside the church, benighted 
scoffers stood about in groups among the carts and the carrots, 
and even joked and actually laughed among each other ; but not 
at the church, nor at the confessional-box, because they were per- 
fectly, wholly, and completely ignorant and careless and indifferent 
about anything which might be going on within that building. 

“ This,” said Claude, when they came out, “ reminds me of a pro- 
cession on the stage where they have forgotten the spectators.” 

“ It is like a concert,” said Valentine, “ where there is no audi- 
ence. Isn’t it dreadful, Claude, for nobody to go to church ?” 

“ It doesn’t seem quite as if the Church had got a strong grip 
of the people about these parts, does it ?” 

Then they left that street, and presently stood upon a bridge 
and gazed upon the romantic waters of the canal which parts 
Hoxton from Kingsland ; and then along St. John’s Road, which 
is a boulevard less popular than Hoxton Street, yet loved by the 
quiet and the meditative. At the end of the street stands a 
massive church — one of those churches built in the middle of 
the last century, with a vast portico of granite pillars and a white 
spire which is big and high and yet not beautiful. They looked 
into that church too. There were no confessional cribs and no 
candles ; no one was mumbling ; the clergyman, on the contrary, 
was speaking out plain and clear, and* the service preserved 
something of the ancient severity. In that church there could 
be counted no fewer than twenty-five families — father, mother, 
and children — all worshipping together as they should, and mak- 
ing a grand total of at least a hundred and twenty people, with- 
out counting the preacher and the pew-opener. This is very 
satisfactory indeed, because the parish contains only seventeen 


172 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


thousand six hundred. One churchgoer out of every hundred 
and fifty ! It makes one hopeful, because it reminds one of the 
early church in Rome, as depicted by M. Renan. 

Then they walked down Pitfield Street and thought no more 
about the people, hut selfishly considered each other, and Valen- 
tine narrated all her adventures, and told of Melenda’s stubborn in- 
dependence, and of Lotty, and of Lizzie, and her own experiment 
of a long day’s work. Only she concealed her great discovery. 

“ You must never do that again, Valentine,” said Claude, re- 
ferring to the day’s work. “ Promise me you will not.” 

“ I do not think I could. But, oh ! think of those poor girls 
working every day and all day long, and for so little ! Is it just 
and right ? Who is to blame for it, Claude ?” 

“The system, I suppose, is to blame — whatever the system 
may he. I have never considered the subject of the English in- 
dustries, except when Sam forces his own opinions upon one.” 

“ But it concerns you, Claude ; and Melenda is your — our sister.” 

“Why do they go on doing such work, I wonder? There 
are other things to do. But Melenda will not brook any inter- 
ference. How can one help a girl who will not accept any help ? 
What can I do ?” 

Valentine made no reply. She was disappointed. Claude 
did not respond to her own enthusiasm. To him it was no new 
thing to hear that working-girls are disgracefully paid and cruelly 
worked. It is, alas ! no new thing to any of us. We hear about 
them every day, yet the thing goes on. 

“ Melenda might go into a shop, or she might go into some 
kind of service. Anything,” said Claude, “ would be better 
than what she does now. But she will take no help from me.” 

“ You might as well put a zebra in harness as Melenda into any 
kind of service. Can nothing be done to get them better work ?” 

“ I don’t know. I will consult with Sam if you like.” 

“ No, Claude, I don’t want you to consult with Sam. Consult 
with yourself. With 'all your knowledge and cleverness you 
need not stoop to take advice of a board schoolmaster.” 

“ My knowledge has not taught me how to deal with work- 
girls.” Here he noticed a change in Valentine’s face. “ I have 
disappointed you, Valentine. I knew I should.” 

“ No, Claude. But I thought — I hoped — oh ! I am so sorry, 
Claude, for those poor girls.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


173 


“ Show me, then, some way to help them.” 

At this point they reached the junction of Pitheld Street and 
Old Street. Here Valentine turned to the right, leading her 
companion past the old wells of Dame Annis le Clair and the 
Peerless Pool — hut they were both, unhappily, ignorant of their 
historical associations — past the great hospital named after the 
physician apostle, where certain demoniacs, unhappy ones of the 
earth, wait for their release from the prison of unreason — it is 
brought to them by a personage figured generally as a skeleton 
with a scythe. Then they passed a church which boasts the 
most amazing spire conceivable. In the whole of the habitable 
world there is to be found none other like unto it. Country 
people and strangers flock in multitudes to Old Street only to 
gaze upon its miracle of ugliness. Travellers are said to cross 
the Atlantic with no other purpose than to visit this, the ugliest 
church in the whole world. Why not? Any street might be 
proud of owning the ugliest thing that ever was built, and if 
people willingly face the perils of the deep to visit the most 
beautiful church in the world, why should they not incur the 
same risks for the sake of the most ugly ? 

At the back of the church there was formerly a vast burying- 
ground, because when St. Luke’s was built, a hundred and fifty 
years ago, the ground hereabouts was cheap. It is not venera^ 
ble, as men generally reckon that quality in churchyards, by age, 
for the church itself has only baptized and buried five genera- 
tions of mortal men and women. But it is venerable because 
here lie at rest the once aching bones of thousands who in their 
lives knew no rest. Here you will not find the remains of any 
great or illustrious men ; they are all the bones of toilers ; their 
names and histories are clean forgotten — even the histories of 
those whose heirs, in their pride, had the name and date of birth 
and death carved upon a headstone. The stones themselves still 
stand, ranged round the walls and within the railings, but no 
man readeth them any more, and if one doth perchance read 
them, the names, even to the oldest parishioner, awaken no 
memory. They have long ceased to bury in this Acre of the 
Lord ; the funeral verses of hope and resignation are no longer 
heard ; there is no more rattling of ashes upon ashes and dust 
to dust, and they have now laid out the ground for the children’s 
play and a place of rest and meditation for the old. The graves 


lU 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


are levelled ; tlie headstones are placed back two and three deep 
within the railings, where the garden-mould covers them up with- 
in an inch or two of their deathless names, and so they stand or 
lean, with only the inscriptions visible, and look as if they were 
not churchyard stones at all, hut the stone faces of the very 
original holders and possessors of the ground, stonily gazing, 
without power either of spoken remonstrance or of approval 
upon the present use of their sleeping-place, yet so great is the 
power of expression in a headstone that one can plainly distin- 
guish in some of them satisfaction ; and in some, doubt and in 
some, stern disapprobation. Two or three of the old railed 
tombs are left upon the grass to serve, perhaps, as the skeleton 
at the feast. As for the ground-itself, it is laid out in four fair 
lawns, each with a round bed of shrubs and a narrow bed of 
flowers. In the middle the ground has been artiflcially lowered, 
and one descends by a step or two into an area where they have 
erected a pedestal. Why a pedestal with nothing on it should 
have been put up passeth man’s understanding ; but this is the 
taste of St. Luke’s, and we have only to bow before it. There 
are, one is pleased to remark, seats in plenty, and the walks are 
asphalted and easy for the foot of age ; and they have planted 
trees which will perhaps some day grow tall and umbrageous. 

This morning there were in the garden a goodly number of 
old men and women, with a great quantity of little children. 
The men sat together, and the women sat together, and they 
talked after their kind, which is a querulous kind, because old 
age is a term of life only to be represented in a favorable light 
by those who know how to conceal things and are rich enough 
to make themselves comfortable. These old people hear the 
voice of the grasshopper continually; besides, they all have 
rheumatism, and they do not attempt to conceal that they hate 
the voice of the grasshopper and abhor rheumatic pains. 

“ Let us sit down,” said Valentine. 

“ The problem of Melenda,” Claude began, sententiously, “ is 
the great problem of labor. It is nothing less than the prob- 
lem of the age.” 

“ Then solve it, Claude. In the old days a knight was sent 
forth to kill a dragon or a loathly worm.” 

“ Anybody could kill a dragon.” 

Or to find the Holy Grail — ” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


175 


“ If one were to find it now, people would first dispute its au- 
thenticity, and then they would stick it in a museum as an ar- 
chaeological curiosity.” 

“ But this is a task of much more interest than a doubtful 
relic. Is it possible, Claude, that you have never thought about 
Melenda and her life ?” 

“ Seriously, Valentine, I never have. Do not reproach me with 
selfishness. Her own independence is one cause, and then we 
have always been accustomed to go each his own way. Sam 
goes one way, Joe another, Melenda another. The only way 
that I can think of to help such a girl, so fiercely independent, 
is to alter the system itself, and that so radically that these mis- 
erable wages shall be made impossible. And it has never oc- 
curred to me that I should try to do this. Had I the lever of 
Archimedes I could not do it.” 

“Yet I think — if I were you, Claude — I think that I would 
try,” she replied, slowly. 

“ I have read books and treatises on Rent, Production, and so 
forth. Everybody reads these things, especially a barrister who 
wants all the information that he can get from every side. But cer- 
tainly not with a view of inventing or preaching any new system.” 

“ Never mind the books, Claude. Look at the people, not the 
theories. Here is our own sister Melenda. The poor thing is 
condemned to a life that is only better than a slave’s because she 
thinks she has kept her independence and because she cannot be 
tied up and flogged. Our own sister, Claude ! She is miserably 
fed and wretchedly clothed ; she is always half starving and she 
goes in pitiful rags. Her very pride and her independence 
make her misery cry out the louder for your help. Your own 
sister — our sister. And she is so brave and so flerce. Our honor 
is concerned, Claude ; we must try ; if we cannot help her any 
other way we will help her by altering the system, even if we 
have to call in Sam, and all become Socialists. It is for Violet’s 
sake and mine, Claude, as well as your own. How can we en- 
dure to live in happiness while she lives in such misery ?” 

“ Yes, Valentine, yes.” Claude was moved by her emotion. 
“You are right. It concerns me, you, Violet — all of us. And 
I am a selflsh creature. But — what am I to do ?” 

“ I do not know,” she replied, impatiently. “ What is the use 
of education and knowledge if they cannot be used to And out 


176 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


things ? Have you become a Fellow of Trinity and a great schol- 
ar and a great lawyer only for your own advancement, Claude ?” 

Claude made no reply, for, you see, his own personal advance- 
ment was exactly what he had always considered the ultimate 
end and object of any success he might make in life. He had 
always put the thing to himself from this point of view ; he in- 
tended to get on, to climb as high as he could, and to do the 
best he might for himself. He had climbed already from the 
washerwoman’s cottage on the edge of Hackney Marsh to the 
Trinity Combination Room, which is a good way up the hill, and 
he was continually thirsting for opportunities to climb higher 
still. When he took the prizes at school, when he carried off 
scholarships at college, when he stood third in the first class of 
the Classical Tripos, he felt himself answering the end of his ex- 
istence, and justifying Lady Mildred’s sagacity in picking him 
out from among so many. His own advancement ! Why, yes 
— his own, and no other’s. 

“ Do not be angry with me, Claude,” she pleaded. “ Only 
this morning, before you came, while I was thinking of these 
poor girls, something I had read somewhere came into my mind. 
It was to the effect that all great things are done by strong men ; 
each thing by one strong man, who knows what he means and is 
strong enough to make other men work for him. If that is true 
we should be always praying for a strong man.” 

“ I suppose we should.” 

“ Why should not you, Claude, be the strong man ?” 

“ Because I am not a strong man, and because my own work 
has been laid down for me on other lines.” 

“ That is only your own work for yourself.” 

“ Yes — yes, of course,” he replied, a little uneasily. “ But 
then it is work which leaves no time for anything else.” 

Suppose you have chosen deliberately the work which seems 
to suit you best, and the goal which seems desirable above all 
others as the noblest and highest ; suppose you have good rea- 
son to believe that you will succeed ; suppose, in fact, that you 
are perfectly satisfied with yourself, and that suddenly you are 
shaken to your very centre by the information that your aims 
are merely personal and selfish : that you are called upon to un- 
dertake certain other work which may cause you to change your 
whole plan of life; that everything you value must be aban- 


CHILDREN OF QIBEON. 


177 


doned if you obeyed that call — this was the new light which 
flashed suddenly upon Claude’s brain on that July morning as 
he sat among the ashes of the obscure dead and among the 
houses of*the obscure living. Dead and living, he belonged to 
them ; they were his own forefathers who lay sleeping beneath 
his feet ; they were his sisters who worked in the houses around 
him. He belonged to them. But never before had it occurred 
to him that he might work for them instead of for himself. 

“ Seriously, Valentine, I do not think you understand what it 
is you propose. Do you really mean that I should set myself to 
finding out a remedy for evils which have defied every professor 
of political economy ?” 

“ I mean that seriously.” 

“But what am I, Valentine, that I should discover an answer 
to the questions which have baffled all the graybeards ?” 

“ Perhaps the answer must come from the young. Oh ! do 
you think that Paul waited till he was gray before he began to 
speak ?” 

Sometimes it seems to me as if Valentine struck here upon a 
great and remarkable truth. We have, perhaps, been all along 
asking too much of the old. It is, perhaps, from the young, 
while their hearts are full of generous emotions and unselfish 
sacrifice is still possible, that an answer to all great questions 
may be expected. The world belongs, in fact, to the young ; 
not only the world to enjoy, but the world to fight ; the future 
is in the shaping of their hands ; theirs is the inheritance ; they 
are the princes and the governors, the sheiks and the emirs, the 
generals and the captains. The old may go on accumulating 
and storing, relating and writing ; that is properly their depart- 
ment ; they are historians. As for new and great ideas, they 
are too much for them ; when one such idea is conceived and 
one such great scheme is brought forth, the old philosopher, the 
veteran economist, the defender of vested interests, the man of 
sixty-year-old ideas, will very naturally bring out his watering- 
pot and turn the" rose on to that idea, and point out the real 
wickedness of the world, the selfishness of man, and the unre- 
mitting watchfulness required by this project, all of which ren- 
der the scheme impracticable and impossible. Then the young 
men will use much the same language as that employed by cer- 
tain unlucky village children towards a certain prophet of old, 
8 * 


178 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


but with a different conclusion to the story. For in my story 
the children would kill the hears. 

“ Everything,” said Claude, “ up to the present has been driv- 
ing me further from my own people ; even, I thought, the re- 
covery of my sister. It will be strange if she should take me 
back to them. Let me think, Valentine. I acknowledge the 
obligation, but I declare that I can do nothing. Why should I 
waste myself in beating the air ?” 

For Valentine did not see, which was clear to himself, that 
such an effort, to be serious, would require nothing short of a 
man’s whole work, with all his thoughts and all his strength. 
And even then he would most likely fail. Yet some small suc- 
cess might be effected. And the thing touched his honor. His 
own sister — not his sister in the common bonds of humanity, 
but the child of his own mother — was one of those who lay 
tied and bound by strong chains in the dungeons of Castle Fam- 
ine, held there by the great bully Giant Competition. His own 
sister. But what could he do for her except — and that, per- 
haps, in vain — give her all that he had ? And so, like the other 
young man who had great possessions, he was minded to go sor- 
rowfully away. For his own possessions were neither of silver 
nor of gold, but the far more precious things' of knowledge and wit 
and understanding — the things which would lead him to honor 
and distinction and men’s praise in the brave days before him. 

At this point of their discourse there came ambling along the 
asphalt an old lady. Valentine seemed to know her, but could 
not recollect where she had seen her — a curious old lady to look 
at, because she walked delicately and gave herself airs such as 
might become a young and beautiful woman. There were not now 
remaining many traces of former beauty, but as much, perhaps, 
as one expects after seventy years of a life not devoted wholly to 
the contemplation of things spiritual. She was dressed in a frock 
which looked ridiculously girlish, and as she walked she rolled her 
eyes about as if to watch the effect produced by her appearance. 

“ Ho !” said this dear old thing, stopping before Claude and 
Valentine. “ Ho ! Indeed ! The young lady of the first-floor 
back ” — Valentine remembered her now. She was the old wom- 
an she had seen dancing all by herself : “ The young lady with 
the new furniture ” — she had inspected it through the keyhole. 
“ I hope you are very well this morning, my dear ; and I hope you 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


179 


are as happy as you are beautiful. Your lovely dress matches 
your lovely complexion, and if you didn’t make it yourself it was 
made in Regent Street, and cost three guineas if a penny, simple 
as it looks. Your pretty boots match your pretty little feet, and 
if they were not given to you they cost you a guinea a pair, and 
your gloves were four and six. Quite right. Quite right. Be as 
happy as you are beautiful, my dear — while your time lasts. 
Youth is the time for happiness. I was happy myself once.” 

Neither her words nor her appearance produced an impres- 
sion of the straitest and most narrow virtue. 

“ I am very well, thank you,” said Valentine, coldly. 

“ With your young man. My dear, I said you had a young 
man. And he a gentleman. I said that nothing short of a 
gentleman would do for you. And he knows how a girl should 
be dressed, he does. Very proper, too, my dear. I had the 
same sentiments as you when I was young.” 

“ Let us go, Claude,” said Valentine, rising. 

Claude gave the old crone a coin, and she ambled away with 
a parting smile and a nod, very terrifying to behold. 

“ A reminiscence,” said Claude, “ or a survival of something 
in the theatrical way, I should say.” 

“ If I thought,” said Valentine, “ that I could ever come to look 
like that old woman — it is not her age and her baldness and her 
poverty, but her terrible eyes — I would go straight into a nun- 
nery at once and hide myself.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE PROFESSOR OF YIDDISH. 

“ I’ve been doing up the room for father,” Lizzie explained. 
It was Sunday evening, and about nine o’clock, when Valentine 
came home and met her coming out of the ground-floor room. 
“ I do it every night before I go out.” 

“ Aud you sit with him sometimes, I suppose ?” 

No, I ain’t fit company for father. He don’t want me. He 
was a gentleman once, and he talks proper.” 

“ Have you got no mother or sisters, or anybody besides your 
father, Lizzie?” 


180 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“There’s Melenda and Lotty. That’s all I’ve got. Before 
Melenda taught me to sew I used to he a step-girl.” 

“What’s that?” 

“ It’s like this, you know. Some people — not here, hut Kings- 
land way, over the canal — like to have their doorsteps cleaned 
once a week. That’s what I did for ’em at a penny a step, and 
sometimes three-ha’pence. When Melenda taught me to sew I 
gave up that. It was only a low trade.” 

“ Where is your mother ?” 

“ She died long ago. There’s only father, and he can’t do 
nothing for me.” 

If he knows how to “talk proper,” Valentine thought, he 
might at least have taught his daughter the same art. She re- 
membered the tall old man with stooping shoulders who took 
off his hat to her. Doubtless this was Lizzie’s father. 

“ Is your father so very poor ?” 

“ Dreadful poor,” said the girl. “ He was a gentleman once, 
but that was a long time ago.” 

“Do you think he would let me call upon him?” 

“ I don’t know.” She opened the door. “ Go in first and ask af- 
terwards. Father, here’s Melenda’s sister says may she come in ?” 

“ May she come in ?” The old man raised his head slowly 
and repeated the words. Then he rose and bowed, offering his 
chair, the only chair in the room. There was no candle, but the 
gas-lamp in the street outside gave sufficient light to show that 
the room was furnished with a wooden bed covered with a rug, 
a table, a chair, a washing-stand, and a candlestick. There 
seemed to be literally nothing else at all. Strange to say, there 
was not even a pipe or the smell of tobacco. 

“ When a young lady comes to see me,” he said, politely, 
“ the least I can do is to offer her a chair. Pray do me the 
honor to be seated.” 

The manner and the voice and the words of the man were 
inconceivably out of keeping with the squalid place in which he 
lived. Valentine accepted the chair and sat down, wondering 
who this man might be. Lizzie stood at the open door watch- 
ing her father with undisguised pride. It was long since she had 
witnessed any of these reminiscences of polite society. “ Once 
he was a gentleman.” Why, thought Valentine, is he now a rag- 
ged gentleman, and how is it that he has suffered his daughter 


CHILDREN, OF GIDEON. 


181 


to grow up without any manners at all, since his own are so 
good? 

“ You have been kind to my daughter,” he said, still stand- 
ing. “ Nobody, so far as I know, has ever before been kind to 
her, not even her father.” 

“ You can’t help that,” said Lizzie, loyally. “ It ain’t your 
fault, father.” 

“ Therefore I thank you,” he added, without noticing the 
interruption. “ My daughter is a work-girl, and is naturally 
more accustomed to ill-treatment than to kindness.” 

“ But I have done nothing for Lizzie.” 

“ You have given her dinner and supper, and you have spoken 
kindly to her. It is something that the girl should find anybody 
to give her anything. Yesterday evening I heard you singing up- 
stairs. You have a very beautiful voice. I could play and sing 
myself formerly. But it is thirty-five years since I played last.” 

“ Have you forgotten how to play ?” 

“ I have not played anything for thirty-five years,” he repeated. 

“ And now you live here all alone.” It was a weak thing to 
say, but one cannot always find epigrams, and besides, Valentine 
was still occupied in wondering what this strange thing might 
mean — the gray-headed, ragged man who lived alone in so miser- 
able a room, and his daughter, who seemed to have nothing to 
do with her father except to look into his rooms once a day — a 
man in such a place who had the unmistakable manners and 
language of a gentleman, and the other who was nothing at all 
but the London workgirl — rough and ignorant, and ill-mannered. 

“ As you see,” he answered, “ quite alone.” 

He sat down on the bed, his hands joined over his knees, look- 
ing at his visitor with large and lustrous eyes. His clothes were 
dilapidated to the last degree — his coat in rags, the elbows in 
holes, his trousers patched at the knees apparently by an ama- 
teur, and his boots gaping at the toes. He was picturesque in 
his rags. Lying on the bed was a tattered Inverness cape, and 
on the table an old felt hat. 

A broken-down gentleman. It was apparent in his voice, in 
his speech, and in his carriage. By what unlucky accident had 
this poor gentleman got down so low ? 

Girls like Valentine are not accustomed to read a man’s past 
history in his face, but she could discern that on this man’s 


182 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


face there was not the seal of drink and vice. It was a face 
with refinement stamped upon the high white forehead, and 
gentleness in the blue eyes which met Valentine’s steadily and 
openly, though with a strange sadness such as she had never 
before seen even in pictures. 

“ Nobody,” said Valentine, “ can be quite alone in the world. 
You must have some friends or relations.” 

Most men have. But a singular accident happened to me — 
a very singular accident” — he raised his voice with a strange 
smile — “ about thirty -five years ago. All my relations died sud- 
denly. All the relations I had in the world and all the friends 
in one day. There is not a single person now in the whole 
world who ever asks if I am living: not one who cares to ask 
me or wishes me back again. I have passed quite away, even 
out of remembrance ; even out of the prayers of those who once 
loved me. For they are all dead. They all died on one day.” 

“ And have you made no new friends all this time ?” 

“ None. Those who are so poor as myself make no friends. 
Twenty years ago I found a woman about the streets as poor 
and as miserable as myself. I made her my wife, and we shared 
our misery. Perhaps hers was lessened. Lizzie is her daughter, 
but she is dead. I have no friends.” 

“ Poor man !” 

“ I have not complained.” 

“ Perhaps if you were to go ‘ back again,’ as you said, you 
might find some of your old friends. They did not all die, I 
am quite sure.” 

“ Yes, they did. Every one. It would be odd, too, to go 
back to the old world just as I am now, and if they were living 
to offer them my hand. Sometimes I have thought of it. But 
there — what does it matter? As for the past, we live in the 
present and the past lives in us. Yes” — his voice sank — “ the 
past never dies : every moment lives forever. That is the dread- 
ful thing. Why, even the souls of the forgiven must go about 
forever with hanging heads and shameful foreheads. Always,” 
he repeated, “ with shameful foreheads.” 

This was the man who had “ done something,” Valentine re- 
membered. 

Lizzie at this point, finding the conversation just a note or 
two above her, went out and shut the door softly. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


183 


You have your daughter.” 

“ Yes. But I can do nothing for her. You wonder that she 
is what she is. Young lady, there is a level — I have reached it 
and stand upon it — which the thoughts and habits of such as 
yourself would turn into a hell. Better for the child of the 
gutter to grow up in the gutter.” 

You must not call Lizzie a child of the gutter. She is your 
child, and she is a pretty girl, and has refinement in her face if 
not in her manners.” 

“ Let her remain where she is and what she is. Then per- 
haps she will never understand the nature of her inheritance.” 

“ What inheritance ?” 

“ Lizzie is a great heiress ; she will inherit the whole of my 
property if she ever finds out of what it consists.” 

“ Your property?” 

The accumulations of thirty-five years, invested at compound 
interest in shame and dishonor.” The words were strong, but 
he spoke quite calmly. “ It is so great a property that I cannot 
bear to die and leave it behind me. I should like to rob her of 
it, and have it buried in my pauper’s grave with me. It is all 
my own making, this property. I am quite a self-made man. 
When I began I had nothing of it. Yet that does not avail. 
I must die and leave it behind me. A man may take into the 
grave nothing of his labor which he may carry away in his 
hand. What profit hath he that he hath labored for the wind ?” 

“ You read the Bible still,” said Valentine, starting. 

“ No, I read nothing. There is not a Bible or any book at 
all in the room ; but I remember something of what I used to 
read. These are the words of the Preacher, who said many 
wise things. It was he who praised the dead which are already 
dead more than the living which are yet alive. I, too, who am 
yet alive, praise the dead more than the living. It must be a 
beautiful thing to be already dead. There the prisoners rest 
together ; they hear not the voice of the oppressor ; the small 
and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master.” 

He said all this in measured tones, and without the least pas- 
sion or sign of emotion. 

You have no books. Can I lend you any ?” 

“ No, I do not want to read.” 

“ Do you always sit here doing nothing ?” 


184 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Always. It is my happiness to do nothing. Then I can 
live the past over again, up to a certain point, and I can fol- 
low the impossible future. I know,” he went on, “that you 
would like to be helping me. Ladies who come to such places 
as this think they can set everything right by a few acts of 
kindness. I thank you, but you cannot help me. Look round 
the room ; you see that I have reduced my life to the simplest 
form possible. Here is a place to lie down upon, with a rug to 
keep me warm ; here is a roof, and here are walls ; a chair, a 
table, a candlestick, a washing-basin — what more does a man 
want? I get my breakfast and my supper at a coffee-stall. 
When I can afford dinner I get it at a coffee-house. I neither 
drink, nor smoke tobacco. I have no other wants than a cer- 
tain amount of food and a place to lie down.” 

“ You are a philosopher.” 

“ No ; a philosopher is contented, but I am not. I live in 
this wretched way because I have no choice. You are curious 
to learn how I live. Very well, I will tell you. It is an honest 
way. I know two or three languages — German and French and 
Italian. I learned them when I was young. I also, by acci- 
dent, once learned some Hebrew. I have since learned a little 
Polish. I know where German immigrants congregate, and I 
write letters for them, especially for the Polish and German 
Jews — all kinds of letters, begging letters, letters asking for 
employment — at twopence each, or whatever I can get for a 
letter. They tell me their wants in their own language, which 
is generally Yiddish — that is to say, Polish and German and 
Hebrew mixed. Sometimes I do well ; sometimes I do badly. 
Very often I do not make as much as a shilling a day. I pay 
three and sixpence a week for my room, and I can live on half 
a crown — fourpcnce a day. That is all ; that is my life.” 

“ Your present life.” 

“ Yes, my present life. Young lady,” he raised himself up- 
right and sighed heavily, “ there are some lives, some unhappy 
lives, across which Fate draws, right in the middle of them, a 
thick black line. My life has been so divided.” 

The thick black line meant, perhaps, some kind of failure or 
bankruptcy, Valentine conjectured, such as reduced Lotty’s fa- 
ther to the profession of roader. Yet he spoke of shame and dis- 
grace, and he was generally supposed to have “ done something.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


185 


“ I wisli I could help you in some way,” she said. “ Let me 
try for your daughter’s sake.” 

“ You say this because you are a young lady, and generous. 
But I want only what 1 have told you — food and a sleeping- 
place, and obscurity. Stay, you can do something for me. Will 
you sing to me ?” 

Valentine considered a little. Then she joined her hands and 
sang to him. She sang, ‘‘ He shall feed his flock,” perhaps 
because it was Sunday evening. 

“ Thank you,” said the man when she had flnished. “ It is 
thirty-flve years since last I heard that sung.” 

“ May I come again and talk to you sometimes ?” 

“ Yes, if you please. But it is not right for you to come 
here. Besides, I might get to look for your coming, and that 
would interfere with my dream.” 

“ Your dream ?” 

“ While I sit here alone in the evening I am possessed by a 
dream. It is the dream of my old life, carried on just as it 
should have been. I follow myself in my dream step by step 
and year by year through the career which might have been mine, 
had it not been for that — that thick black line. If you were to 
destroy that dream, you would destroy my only pleasure. Then 
I should become discontented and dream of revenge instead. 
That would be bad and foolish for me ; first, because I never 
shall get my revenge, and next, because thinking of it calls up the 
devil, who makes me fall into a rage and then claws at my heart 
and tries to drag it out of my body. One of these days he will 
succeed, and then the doctor will say I died of angina pectoris, 
because it is not scientific to say that a man died of a raging devil. 
If it were not for that I should dream of revenge perpetually.” 

“ Oh, but,” said Valentine, in the amiable manner of one who 
has no enemies to forgive, “ revenge is such a poor thing to de- 
sire, and, besides, it never satisfies.” 

“ I don’t know,” the man replied. “ Simple killing does not 
satisfy. But something like the eternal revenge of Ugo Fos- 
colo, you know, something to go back to at intervals, and when 
the old rage rises again in your heart like a flame. Ah !” he 
clapped his hand to his heart, “ it begins again.” He gasped, and 
held his breath as one in sharp and sudden pain. Then he pulled 
out of his pocket a little bottle, and the room 'became charged 


186 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


with the faint scent of ether. “ I must not talk any more about 
it. Sometimes I think that forever and forever I shall be pun- 
ished for my sin by this flaming fire in my heart, and the burn- 
ing desire for revenge. Well, I will not complain. Hush! Do 
not talk to me any more. Let me get back quickly to my dream.” 

She turned to go. Just then there came the sound of steps 
and a kind of scuffle outside the door. 

It was caused by the old lady of the back room, who was be- 
ing dragged, pushed, or assisted to her own room by a young 
man dressed in a black frock coat and a tall hat. The old lady 
was apparently unwilling to go. 

“ Is she ill?” asked Valentine. 

“ No ; in these cases the illness follows the attack. She will 
be ill enough to-morrow. Come, old lady, off you go to bed.” 

The patient began to sing, and even Valentine, in spite of her 
inexperience, was able to understand that her illness was caused 
by nothing else than a rush of alcohol to her head. In fact, the 
poor old creature was tipsy. She had been spending on gin the 
shilling which Claude gave her in the morning. The man who 
was helping her got her into her room with a vigorous effort, 
and came out, shutting the door upon her. 

“ There,” he said, “she’s all right now. You’ll hear her mak- 
ing a little noise, perhaps, but not much, and she’ll soon be 
asleep. Somebody has given her gin, and I suppose she’d had 
nothing to eat all day. The boys were chivying her about the 
street, so I brought her home. She will sleep it off.” Then he 
looked into the front room. “ Good-evening, Mr. Lane. No 
more attacks, I hope?” 

“ I had one just now, doctor. I began to think — ” 

“ Well, then, you mustn’t think. I warned you before. If you 
get excited you’ll j ust kill yourself. How’s the dream getting on ?” 

“ It’s working itself out slowly, doctor. Slowly the career 
approaches its appointed end. A deanery has been offered him, 
but he has refused it. A man of such eloquence and learning 
can’t be shelved with a deanery ! A bishopric is the least that 
he will take. Sometimes there are thoughts about an archbish- 
opric. But I doubt whether there will be time on account of 
my thinking, you know, and the rages I fall into — ” 

“ You must not fall into rages.” 

“ The other day I seemed to hear his voice. But it was only 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


187 


some one talking outside with this young lady. Yet it was his 
own voice — exactly his own voice.” 

“ I have warned you, remember. Good-night !” 

The doctor shut the door, and turned abruptly to Valentine. 

“Well,” he asked, “you are the young lady that was singing 
the other evening. What do you think about us ?” 

He might just as well have asked what Valentine thought 
about humanity in the abstract. She replied to that effect. 

“ I don’t suppose you have come here without an object,” he 
went on. “ You have got something at work in your brain. It is 
charity or religion or humanity, I suppose. Whatever it is, if you 
want information come to me. I know all the people about here.” 

He had a rugged face ; his cheeks were without color, as 
often happens to those who have lived always in the streets of 
a great city; he was neither tall nor short, rather a thin man, 
about thirty years of age ; but he had a big head. His eyes 
were deep-set under shaggy eyebrows — quick, earnest eyes ; his 
forehead was square, and his nose was large, rough hewn, and 
distinctly ugly ; his dark bair was parted at the side, and had 
already begun to “ go ” at the temple ; he carried his head a 
little on one side habitually. It is a mode which suggests a 
thoughtful disposition. 

“ Thank you,” said Valentine. 

“ You will want to know a good deal, I dare say. Very good 
th^n. To save you trouble.” He spoke in a quick, jerky way, 
as if he were wanted elsewhere, which was in fact always the case 
with him. “ Do we go to church ? We do not. Do we revere 
the institutions of our ancestors? We do not. Have we any 
respect for rank and dignity ? Not a bit. Do we care for any- 
thing but meat and drink and warmth and ease ? We do not. 
Are we dangerous ? Not so long as we are in regular work. Do 
we save our money ? Not a mag. For whom do we vote ? For 
the Radical, because he promises to tear things down. What is 
our political programme ? The abolition of Church and Lords. 
Why ? Because we think it will raise wages and lower the price 
of beer.” 

“ Thank you,” said Valentine. “ But I am not likely to in- 
quire into the politics of the people.” 

“ Do we," then, yearn for art ? No, we do not. Do we love 
things beautiful ? We don’t even know what beauty means.” 


188 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ I do not expect to find art here.” 

“ Are, then, our morals good ? They are not. Have we any vir- 
tues at all ? A few. We are tolerably honest ; we are generous 
when we have any money, and we stand by each other when we are 
in trouble : man by man, woman by woman, and girl by girl.” 

“ Girl by girl ?” 

“ Because,” he explained, irreverently, “ there is none other 
that fighteth for them, as your Prayer-Book says, but only they 
themselves. So they stand by each other. There’s a magnifi- 
cent example in this very house up-stairs.” 

“ Thank you very much. Good-night.” She moved towards 
the staircase, but he stopped her. 

“ One minute,” he said. “ I mean what I say. They tell me you 
are staying here. It is a queer place for a young lady to take lodg- 
ings in. Got a little pocket gospel of your own to run, perhaps ?” 

“ No, I am quite contented with the old gospel.” 

“ Come to do good, as they call it ? Well, you mean the best, 
I dare say. Don’t do more harm than you can help. I’m al- 
ways somewhere about the place if you want me. Good-night.” 

He nodded his head familiarly, without the usual ceremony 
of lifting his hat, and hurried away. 


CHAPTER VIII. 
lotty’s foolish dream. 

After her two days’ rest Lotty ought, in common decency, to 
have shown some signs of improvement, if not of complete re- 
covery. That she did not was only part of the well-known in- 
gratitude of the poor. You may give them a lift over a bad 
bit, and they go on stumbling into worse bits : the sick woman 
basely and ungratefully develops more alarming symptoms, and 
the man out of work continues to meet wdth new disappoint- 
ments, so that where you began with a helping hand you must 
either maintain a pensioner or leave your patient in a worse 
plight than you found him. 

I do not think that Lotty meant to be ungrateful ; she would 
have preferred, I am quite sure, strength to weakness and health 
to pain, but she did have a very bad night on Sunday, and when 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


189 


on Monday morning Valentine looked in she found the girl in 
a low way. One bunch of grapes and two days’ rest, and a 
real, not a phantom, dinner on each day, were, you see, insuffi- 
cient by themselves to meet the case. Valentine thought of 
what the old man below had said about ladies thinking to set 
everything right with a few acts of kindness. Even a bunch of 
hothouse grapes, at four shillings a pound, is not enough to re- 
pair the mischief wrought by eight long years of privation and 
hard work. Valentine might as well have tried to restore her 
youth to the old lady on the ground-floor back with a box of 
violet powder. Acts of kindness are not without their uses, but 
they cannot actually cure disease. 

Lotty was lying on her back, pale and with closed eyes. The 
two girls were standing by the bedside frightened. 

“ She’s awful bad,” said Lizzie. “ She’s been bad all night. 
It isn’t that she’s hungry, because yesterday was Sunday and 
there was a bit of meat. You can speak to her if you like : she 
isn’t asleep.” 

“ Don’t try to speak, Lotty. We will carry you into the other 
room. It is quieter and the bed is easier. We will all three 
carry you.” Melenda turned her shoulder with an expressive 
gesture. “Melenda, are you so proud that you cannot even 
bear to see your friend relieved ?” 

“ Do what you like for her,” said Melenda. Then she burst 
into tears of jealous rage at her own impotence. “ You sha’n’t do 
anything for me. Oh, Lotty !” she flung her arms over her friend. 
“ I can’t do anything for you, my dear, and I thought I was to 
do everything. I’m no use to you when you want my use the 
most. And now you’re going to be helped by a stranger.” 

Valentine said nothing, and presently Melenda left off crying, 
and consoled herself by assuming the command in the matter 
of carrying Lotty. 

The other room was certainly quieter and cooler, and the bed 
was not so hard. And then they sent for the doctor. 

It was the same young man who had spoken to Valentine on 
the Sunday evening. But this morning he seemed rougher in 
his speech and manner. 

“ It’s been coming he said ; “ I’ve seen it coming.” 

“ What is it ?” 

“ She’s got to rest. Don’t tell me, you girls, that she can’t. 

N 


190 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


Because she’s got to, do you hear ? and she’s got to have good 
food.” 

“ Rest and good food !” said Melenda, bitterly. “ Oh, Lord ! 
why don’t you say she’s got to have oysters and chicken and 
port wine ?” 

“Good food !” said Lizzie. But she looked at Valentine. 

“ Rest and good food,” the doctor repeated, “ and nothing to 
do for the remainder of her days ; and that won’t be long,” he 
added, in a lower tone. 

“ She shall have rest and proper food,” said Valentine. 

The sharpest sting of poverty is when you are made to feel your 
own impotence to relieve the suffering which wealth can remove ; 
even to avert the death which wealth can stave off. Melenda’s 
eyes flashed, and she made as if she would say something fierce 
and resentful ; but she restrained herself in the presence of the 
doctor, though the effort cost her a good deal and the tears sprang 
to her eyes. “ Come, Liz,” she said, “ we’ll go back to work.” 

“ There’s only you and me now,” she said, presently, looking 
up ; “ Lotty won’t come back any more. She won’t let her 
come back. She’ll give her grapes and beef and cocoa so that 
she won’t want to come back. She’s given her a new petti- 
coat and new stockings already. She’ll try to make her hate us 
just to spite me because I let her have a bit of my mind. Oh, 
I know for all her meek ways she’s a sly one ! If it’s good 
for Lotty ” — here she choked. She wished to be loyal to her 
friend, but it was a bitter thing that she should be taking gifts 
from anybody but herself. “ You’ll go next, I suppose, Liz. 
Very well then. There’ll be only me left. If you want to de- 
sert me, take and go and do it. Perhaps she’ll give you all 
your meals if you stoop so low as to take ’em.” 

“ Don’t talk wild, Melenda. Lotty hasn’t deserted us. Why 
can’t you be civil to your own sister ? Why shouldn’t she help 
Lotty ? I’m glad she came here — there ! I’m glad she came. 
Do you hear that ?” 

Melenda at other times would have crushed this spirit of re- 
volt, but she was this morning too dejected, and made no reply. 

“ Desert us ?” Lizzie went on. “ Why shouldn’t Lotty de- 
sert us, come to that ? What can we give her ? Desert us ? 
Why, Melenda, it’s so miserable that we may just as well desert 
each other at once, and give up trying.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


191 


Still Melenda made no reply. 

“ Last night,” Lizzie continued, “ she went and sat with father. 
Poor old dad ! With him in his rags. Did you ever do that ? 
And she sang to him, and Saturday all day long she worked for 
Lotty. You never did more. Desert us ? What could Lotty 
do better, I should like to know ? Look at this bed and the one 
she is lying on ; look at this room and the other ; look at her 
dinner and ours. I re’lly wonder you should talk such nonsense.” 

Still Melenda made no reply. She was crushed. Her grow- 
ing discontent and her newly-born knowledge of better things 
gave Lizzie a spirit which privation could never give her. 

In this way, however, Lotty’s chains were taken from her. 

Day followed day, but she did not rise from the bed. Some- 
times Melenda sat beside her, work in hand, gentle with her, 
though full of resentment against Valentine. Sometimes Lizzie 
sat with her. Generally it was Valentine who read to her, sang 
to her, talked to her, and nursed her. There are some women 
whose mere presence soothes a patient ; whose touch drives away 
pain ; whose voice is a sedative ; who are the born nurses. Val- 
entine belonged to them. 

A little happiness, even if you do have a bad cough with it, 
and an aching back, and limbs which feel as if they could never 
move again, is a medicine delightful to take, and sovereign against 
many evils, especially lines in the forehead, drawn mouth, and 
worn eyes. Lotty’s thin cheeks did not grow any fuller, but 
they lost something of their waxen pallor, and a faint glow ap- 
peared on them as of winter sunshine. Her hollow chest did 
not grow any deeper, but her shoulders seemed less contracted. 
Her eyes were uot so weary, and on her thin lips there present- 
ly appeared once more the old smile which she had lost about 
the time when her father went bankrupt, and her mother went 
mad, and her sister said she wouldn’t stand it any longer. She 
would never get any better ; she knew this somehow, but it is 
not hard, when one has had so long a spell of work, just to lie 
passive, though the days which slip by so quickly bring death 
so very near. Less hard still is it when one has such a nurse 
as Valentine, and a doctor who comes every day with something 
to charm away the aching, and for the first time, after many a 
long year, dainty and sufficient food. Presently sweet and pleas- 
ant thoughts began to linger in her brain ; they were thoughts 


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CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


that came to her while Valentine read and sang. The spectre 
of Famine, with her dreadful uplifted scourge of scorpions, had 
vanished. She was no longer driven to try, if only for half an 
hour, to hold the shirts and make the button-holes. She was no 
longer anxious for the future ; though there was no more wmrk 
for her to do, she could not starve. Valentine was with her ; 
she could close her eyes in peace and sleep without dreaming 
of an empty shelf in the morning. Is it possible for us, the 
overfed sons and daughters of a luxurious bourgeoisie, our eyes 
swelling out for fatness, who have never known a single day 
without its three abundant meals, and never felt the pangs of 
unsatisfied appetite, even to conceive of an existence such as 
Melenda and Lotty had lived together for eight years, with never 
enough to eat on any day from year to year ? Why, one asks, 
what contentment, what resignation, even what acquiescence in 
life as a gift or a loan, of something precious, can there be when 
one is always hungry ? Of the two other girls, the presence of 
Valentine made one daily more discontented with her lot be- 
cause of that terrible temptation of which we have heard. She 
could any day, only by saying the word, convert herself, she was 
told, from a work-girl into a “ lady ” — the word being used to 
signify one who does no work for her living, and wears fine 
clothes and lives in comfort. As for the other, it made her 
daily more obdurate and more angry, because she was so help- 
less, and it was Valentine who did everything for her friend. 

“ I won’t be kind to her, then,” she said, when for the fiftieth 
time Lotty besought her and expostulated with her. “ I won’t 
give in and be kind to her. Why should I ? First, she comes 
and laughs at us.” 

“ No, she didn’t laugh.” 

‘‘ She said she was twins and she didn’t know which she was. 
Do you call that laughing at us ? I do. Then she comes again 
and thinks she can make it up with beefsteak and ham. No, 
Lotty ; and it ain’t likely.” 

“ She came to live here of her own accord. She wasn’t 
obliged to come. She’s never cross and never unkind ; she 
never says a hard word of anybody ; and oh, Melenda, the care 
she takes of me ! Even you, my dear, never took more care. 
And the nights wEen she sits up with me, and the things she 
gets for me, and, oh, Melenda, I ain’t her siste;*, and she’d do 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


193 


more than this for you if you’d only let her.” Melenda sniffed. 
That fact made Valentine’s conduct the more intrusive. “ And 
she watches every day for you to give in a bit.” 

“ Let her watch, then,” said Melenda. 

No little pocket gospel after all ?” asked the doctor again. 
He was standing at the foot of the bed looking at his patient. 
He had not removed his hat — a ceremony he usually omitted 
in his rounds — his hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders 
were a little rounded, and he looked as if he despised the vulgar 
details of good manners. “ No little pocket gospel, then ?” 

“ None — why ?” 

“ Because — well — because the summer is hot and this place 
is noisome, and you are doing the work of a hospital nurse, and 
somehow you look as if you ought to be at the seaside, or in 
some quiet country place under the trees. And, in short, what 
do you do it for ?” 

“ Why do you ask for motives ? You said yourself the other 
day that there was only one motive, and that was pure selfishness.” 

That is so. They call it religion, patriotism, benevolence, 
charity — whatever they please. It is all self-preservation.” 

“ And there is no disinterested action at all possible for poor 
humanity ?” 

“ There are illusions. Women do wonderful things for men 
whom they love, as they call it. Men call it love when they 
subjugate a woman and get a slave for nothing. Why women 
delight in being slaves I do not know.” 

“ And so everything is an illusion.” 

“ Everything except what you see ; and sometimes that is an 
illusion too. When life is over, what is the past but illusion? 
We are born, we live and suffer, and we die and are forgot- 
ten. That is the history of Ivy Lane, where there are eight hun- 
dred people, and two births and one funeral every week. But 
I don’t understand you. If we ever do get a lady here, she 
comes and looks about her, and is disappointed because we are 
not more unpleasant, and then she does a kind thing or two and 
goes away with a feeling that the sum of poverty has been sen- 
sibly alleviated by her visit. She has seen a suffering object, 
which gave her pain ; she has relieved her suffering for a little 
while, which gave her pleasure. But you — why, you have given 
9 


194 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


■ — yourself. Well” — lie changed the subject abruptly — “what 
do you think of the working-girl ? You have got three of them 
to study. There are thousands just exactly like them.” 

“ I can think of these three only and how to help them.” 

He answered indirectly. He took up Lotty’s arm and bared 
it to the elbow. 

“ You see : a strong bone and a good length of limb. Nature 
designed this arm for a stout, strong woman. A fair breadth of 
shoulder, too. Nature meant this girl to be a really fine speci- 
men. Look at her forehead : it is broad and low — a capable 
forehead ; and her mouth — see how fine are the lines and yet 
how strong ; this was meant to be a very noble woman, strong 
in her illusions of love for husband and children. Yet, you see, 
a splendid model ruined.” 

“ Poor Lotty !” 

“ We are always wasting and ruining fine models. This street 
is full of human wrecks. You’ve got two of them below — Mr. 
Lane, the letter-writer, and the old woman. What does it mean?’' 

“ Can you tell me what it means ?” 

“ Nature says to man, ‘ Learn my secrets, or I will kill you. 
I have no pity on any one — I will kill you unless you learn my 
secrets.’ Very well : some of us, the happy few who can, are 
always learning these secrets, and saving men from Nature’s 
traps. But man says to his brother, ‘ If you are not strong 
enough to defend yourself against me, I will make you my 
slave ; you shall work for me on my own terms.’ I don’t 
know whether Nature is more cruel than man, or man than Nat- 
ure. Here you see ” — he touched Lotty’s cheek. The girl did 
not understand a word of what he was saying, but he was the 
doctor, and if he were to cut off her arms she would not dream 
of resistance. “ Here is a case in which man, meeting no power 
of self-defence, has worked his wicked will, pretending that he 
is obeying the laws of political economy. That is to say, he 
turns this girl into a machine for doing what she ought not to 
have done at all, for longer hours than she ought to work, for 
less pay than she ought to receive, and for poorer food than 
any woman ought to eat. Nature, at her worst, would not have 
trampled on her worse than man has done.” 

“ What are we to do then ?” 

He sat down and looked in her face blankly. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


195 


I don’t know. If I did know everybody else should know. 
There are only two ways of helping the working-women, and 
one of these, at least, is possible. The impossible way is that 
the ladies of the country shall unite to form a protection league 
for their working sisters.” 

“ Why is that impossible ?” 

“Because they don’t care for their working sisters,” he re- 
plied, bluntly. “ You only care because you have lived among 
them and know what their sufferings are. Ladies deliberately 
shut their eyes ; they won’t take trouble ; they won’t think ; 
they like things about them to look smooth and comfortable ; 
they will get things cheap if they can. What do they care if 
the cheapness is got by starving women ? What is killing this 
girl here ? Bad food and hard work. Cheapness ! What do the 
ladies care how many working-girls are killed ? Confess now.” 

Valentine would not confess. 

“Well, there may be another way. It is by the working peo- 
ple themselves, and that by a grand universal league, or federa- 
tion, or brotherhood of labor — men and women alike — to control 
wages and work. I do not see why such a league should not be 
formed. If men can unite for one branch of work they ought 
to be able to unite for all.” 

“ Why should they not ?” 

“ Because the mass that has to be moved is so gigantic that 
not one prophet, but ten thousand, all preaching the same gospel 
at the same time are wanted. I wonder how it would work out.” 

“ How would it work out ?” 

“We’ve always got to take into consideration man’s greed 
and selfishness. However, if we got over that, first of all, a case 
like this would not be allowed. The league would make it im- 
possible. The league ” — he sat down and put his hands in his 
pockets, looking straight into Valentine’s face, but as if he did 
not see her. “ I have often wondered what such a league would 
do. I suppose it would become a most stupendous tyranny — 
everything for the general good must be. I think it would try 
to be just on the whole — there’s somehow a natural instinct 
against injustice ; it would be the most powerful instrument 
ever devised ; it would control the whole government ; it would 
go making all kinds of laws for the restriction of liberty, that 
is quite certain. I suppose they wouldn’t let the men marry 


196 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


under thirty nor the women under five-and-twenty. As for the 
men with land and capital, and corporate bodies and companies 
with property, I should say the league would make itself un- 
popular with them. One thing, however, the league would do, 
and that as soon as it was established.” 

“ What is that ?” 

“ It would insist on this girl and her friends working half the 
time for double the wages.” 

“ I don’t see much difference,” said Valentine, “ between your 
league and Sam’s Socialism.” 

“ I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Mr. Samuel, but there is 
this difference — that my league will he formed by the people for 
the people, and the Socialists want to impose their scheme on 
the people.” 

“ Why not, if it is good for them ?” 

“Because, young lady, you can’t improve people by any 
scheme or law or government at all. They must improve them- 
selves. The best chance is when every man feels that he is 
part of the government. You have no idea of their obstinacy. 
They will neither be led nor driven nor coaxed ; they will only go 
of their own free will. And some ways they will never go at all.” 

“ Then I wish the brotherhood or league were formed already.” 

“ Perhaps you and your friends would lose your property and 
your money.” 

“ But we should free Melenda.” 

“ A very good thing for her, and I don’t suppose it would be 
very bad for you. As for me, I have got no money, and my 
profession brings in as it is only the wages of a mechanic — so I 
shall not suffer.” 

He got up and buttoned his coat. 

“ You, Lotty girl,” he said, “ keep quiet. I sometimes think ” 
— he turned to Valentine again as he went out — “ I sometimes 
think that I may live to see that great league of labor.” 

I know not what Lotty heard or understood of the doctor’s 
discourse, but it may have been this which suggested a truly 
wonderful dream that came to her that very afternoon when she 
fell asleep after dinner while Valentine sat reading, and through 
the open window came the murmur of the children’s voices in 
the school behind Ivy Lane. According to an ancient author- 
ity there are five kinds of dreams ; and sometinies they come 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


197 


throiigli tlie gate of horn and 'sometimes through that of ivory. 
This dream came to Lotty through the gate of ivory. It was 
the kind described as the imagination of a non-existent thing, and 
yet a holy dream, and one to be received as a gift from heaven 
and sent to cheer and comfort a dying girl with the vision of what 
might be. She dreamed that she was in a workshop — lofty, well- 
aired, and beautiful. She was doing some kind of work — I think 
she was making up white linen robes for the harpers who play 
before the Throne — and her work filled her with joy. She was 
quite well and strong, and without pain of any kind, and she 
felt a strange elasticity in her limbs. Her sister Tilly was be- 
side her dressed in white like herself, and as she recognized 
her it was as if a sponge had blotted out the past, so that it 
should be remembered no more, and Lotty rejoiced that Tilly, 
too, should have a frock as white as any in the workroom. 

Melenda was with her too, the lines gone from her face, her 
thin cheeks filled out, looking truly beautiful in the eyes of 
Lotty and her like ; and Lizzie was there, also with work in her 
hand, but laughing and talking more than she worked. Valen- 
tine was there too, dressed just the same as herself, but she 
looked more lovely than all the rest ; and the other one — she 
who had cried when Melenda spoke up ; but now she was sitting 
beside Melenda with one arm round her neck. They were all 
so fond of Melenda that they could not make enough of her. 
There were thousands of work-girls in the room ; they were all 
laughing and talking happily ; and outside the open window 
stretched a great garden with the morning sun lying on it, and 
orchards filled with trees loaded with ripe apples. The scent 
of flowers came into the room ; and no one was tired, no one 
was hungry, no one was cross or wicked. Strangest thing of 
all, Lizzie’s father was with them, looking venerable with his 
long white hair brushed off his forehead. He was not in rags, 
but dressed like a gentleman, and he sat at a great organ. 
When he began to play Valentine stood up to sing, and all 
the girls tried to sing too, but could not, because of the tears — 
tears of joy and happiness — and the memories of the cruel past, 
which choked them. 

“Why, Lotty, Lotty !” said Valentine, “what is the matter, 
dear ?” 

“ It was my dream,” she replied, looking about her. 


198 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ You laughed and cried together, dear. But you have had 
a long and refreshing sleep, and it is nearly tea-time. This 
makes up for last night, doesn’t it ?” 


CHAPTER IX. 

SHOWING HOW THE BAND PLAYED. 

“ Melenda says Sam’s here,” said Lizzie, putting her head 
into the room. “ If you want to see him, you’d better come at 
once. And, I say, you’d better look out. Melenda’s in a rage, 
and the band’s a-going to play, sharp !” 

Sam Monument, from time to time, remembered that he had 
a sister, and went to visit her. It was not often ; because since 
his rise to greatness he was no longer proud of his poor rela- 
tions. The few among us who have raised themselves to the 
level of a board schoolmaster will sympathize with Sam. Be- 
sides, it made him ashamed even to think of Melenda ; and it 
made him rage like Scylla and Charybdis, and the Maelstrom, 
and the rapids of Niagara, actually to see her at her miserable 
work. Again, there is a rule which should be carefully ob- 
served in visiting one’s poor relations — but Sam had never 
heard of this rule — namely, always to visit them in mild and 
cloudy weather. The former, that one may be spared the bit- 
terness of cold ; and the latter, so that there may be no mockery 
of sunshine. Sam came to Ivy Lane on a splendid summer 
evening, when the sunshine made everything glorious that was 
clean and neat, and magnified the meanness of everything that 
was dingy and ill-kept. When Valentine opened the door he 
was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, which gave 
him the command, so to speak, of the room. Melenda was sit- 
ting by the table, her work in her lap, and the thimble on her 
finger ; but she was not sewing ; and there was a gleam in her 
eye which betokened another approaching triumph of temper. 
She looked strangely like her brother ; the eyes as bright, the lips 
as firm, only that her own red hair was long and Sam’s was short, 
rising from his forehead like a cliff, so that his head resembled 
the rounded back of a hedgehog about to defend its property. 

‘‘ Oh !” he said, with a kind of snort when Valentine ap- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


199 


peared. “ You are here, then. Claude told me something about 
it. I hope you are pleased with what you have found. Ever 
been in this room before ? Have you looked round it ? Satis- 
fied and pleased with it ? Like to feel that your sister lives in 
it ? Nice place, isn’t it ?” He went on without waiting for an 
answer. “ Nice work, too, they do in it. Wholesome, well- 
paid work. Work to make a woman rich and happy. Some- 
thing for your rich friends to be proud of, isn’t it ?” 

The room looked more than commonly dingy. The strings 
of the blind were broken ; the blind itself was pinned up, and 
a reflection of the evening sun from an opposite window fell 
upon the side of the room, not so much lighting it up as show- 
ing how dingy it was, and how desperately shabby. 

“ It don’t matter much what you think, Sam, nor what she 
thinks. Thinking can’t alter things. Those who’ve got work 
to do must do the work they can get. She can give dinners to 
people who haven’t the independence to refuse ” — Melenda tossed 
her head at Lizzie, who laughed defiance — “ and will only be the 
more discontented afterwards, when she goes away. But she can’t 
get us better work nor better wages. What’s the good then ?” 

“ What did you come for ?” Sam asked. “ What made you 
leave your friends and come down here ? These people are your 
enemies; the working people are the natural enemies of the 
people who do nothing. I told you, when I saw you first, that 
you’ve got to choose. If you like to give them up, say the 
word, and I’ll find something for you to do. If you won’t give 
them up, then go away back again, and enjoy yourself as long 
as you can, till the smash comes.” 

“ I shall not give them up, certainly,” said Valentine. “And 
I am not going back again just yet.” 

“ Oh, very well. You’re one of those who go tinkering up a 
rotten place here and painting over a bad place there, and pre- 
tending that everything is sound and healthy. I know the sort. 
You get some people together, and you give a concert, and call 
it softening the masses. You get a few pictures and hang ’em 
up in a schoolroom and call it introducing art among the lower 
orders. Yah ! Art and the lower orders ! Or you have tea and 
cakes and a hymn, and call it bringing religion home to the peo- 
ple. And then you go around with pennies and oranges for 
the children and flannel for the old women, and call it bringing 


200 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


the classes together. As long as you choose to stay with them, 
I tell you all the people are your natural enemies. Melenda here 
is your enemy, and so is Lizzie, and so is the girl you’ve got 
laid up in the other room.” 

There is a pleasing nursery fiction that accounts for many dis- 
agreeable things by a theory on the right and the wrong way of 
getting out of bed. Valentine remembered this, and felt quite 
certain that Sam, Melenda, and Lizzie had all three got out of 
bed the wrong way that morning. There was going to he a row, 
and one of uncertain dimensions. And she was invited by Melen- 
da in order that she might assist at that row and help to make 
it a row royal. Therefore, she made haste with a soft answer. 

“ I did not come with any ambitious idea of spreading art or 
religion. I simply came because I wanted to know — my sister 
— Melenda.” This was not a fib absolute, because when she 
came Melenda was a possible sister. But it was so far a fib that 
Valentine hesitated a little over its utterance. 

“ Ho !” said Melenda, just to show how very little way in 
knowledge Valentine had so far advanced. 

“ Partly I wanted to see with my own eyes the kind of life 
from which I — that is, Melenda’s sister, Polly — had been taken.” 

“Yes,” said Melenda; “to look at us as if we were black 
savages in a show, and to give us half a sovereign each, and then 
go away and forget us.” 

“Melenda is unjust,” Valentine replied; “hut she tolerates 
my presence, which is something, though she will not accept 
any service from me.” 

“ How long are you going to stay ? You can’t he comfortable 
here ?” Sam asked. 

“ I didn’t ask her to come, and I sha’n’t ask her to stay,” said 
Melenda the Irreconcilable, now in her most stubborn mood, her 
upper lip stiffened and her eye set stormy. Perhaps she was 
stimulated by the example of her brother, who was of mulelike 
obstinacy. He called it firmness. 

“ I am to stay here all the summer,” Valentine explained. 
“ Then I am going back for a time. After that my plans are 
not yet certain.” 

“ Humph !” said Sam. “You’ve taken a great deal of trouble 
for nothing. That’s all. As for wanting to know a girl who 
hasn’t got the spirit to raise herself out of this ” — he looked 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


201 


round with the infinite contempt of a self -raised man — “ I don’t see 
what you expect to get by it. You’ve only put her back up so far.” 

“ That’s all,” said Melenda ; “ and it’s going to keep up.” 

“ There’s one thing you might do,” he went on. “ You might 
help to make the workwomen discontented. Suppose you got 
hold of Lizzie here !” He laid his hand upon her shoulder. 
“ Suppose you made her compare her frock with yours, and 
told her to ask why there is so much difference.” Lizzie lifted 
her great eyes upon Valentine’s frock, which really was a very 
neat and finished piece of work, and fitted her like a glove. 
Her own, she knew well, could not be compared with it. Little 
did Sam know of the seeds of discontent already planted in her 
bosom. “ But you don’t dare to try. You and your friends 
are all for keeping them quiet. Make her feel that she hasn’t 
got what she ought to have ; then teach her why she hasn’t got 
it — because she’s robbed by your friends. Then there’ll be a 
chance that the girls will combine to get it, and that they’ll be 
backed up by the men. As for these girls, they haven’t begun 
to grumble.” 

“ Haven’t we ?” said Melenda. 

“ They believe that there isn’t more money to be got.” 

“No more there is,” said Melenda. 

“ They think it is a law of the universe that they should work 
and live in a room like this and go in rags, and be paid eleven- 
pence ha’penny a day.” 

“And find your own cotton,” said Lizzie, furnishing a not 
unimportant detail. 

“ And fourpence for the work-book, which you can get for a 
penny outside. And if you dare to complain they make it six- 
pence,” Melenda added. 

“ And be sworn at if they’re Germans, and drilled if they’re 
English. We like it, I suppose.” 

“ You’re a fool, Sam,” said Melenda, putting the case plainly. 
“ You and your discontent ! If you really think we like it, 
you’re a bigger fool than you look. We didn’t want her com- 
ing here, nor you neither, to teach us that it’s a shame.” 

“ Nor to tell me to look at her frock and mine,” said Lizzie. 

“ Come then, Sam,” his sister went on while Valentine kept a 
careful silence, “ come then. Have you got anything better for 
us when we have got discontented ? There’s machine work and 
^9 


202 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


shirts at a penny apiece ; we can get twopence a dozen for the 
button-holes ; there’s bottle-washing for five shillings a week, 
and cigar-makin’ for the same ; there’s the dust-yards and the 
sifting at a shilling a day. Shall we change for that ? There’s 
the match-makers with the stuff that eats away their mouths — ” 

“Oh, Melenda !” said Valentine. 

“ What’s he come here for, then ? How can we find time to 
keep the place neat and tidy ? Why ain’t we better off ? Let 
him show us the way then.” 

“ It’s better,” said Lizzie, “ to help people than it is to get 
into a rage with them. Valentine does help me and Lotty in 
spite of Melenda.” 

Melenda looked as if she might turn on the other two as well 
as on her brother. But she refrained. “ If that is all you’ve 
got to say, Sam, you may as well go.” 

“ Coming here,” Lizzie went on, with a laudable desire to as- 
sist in the music of the band, “ and swearing at us as if it was 
our own fault.” 

“ I didn’t swear,” said Sam, in some confusion. 

“ You did. You always do when you come here.” 

“Well, then, it’s enough to make a pig swear,” he replied, 
guiltily, because a board schoolmaster certainly ought not to 
swear. Language and temper are beneath the dignity of a 
profession which should be above the minor weaknesses of 
humanity. 

“ Well, Sam, please do not swear again,” said Valentine, still 
anxious for peace ; “ and now — you who know so much and 
have had so many opportunities for studying the question from 
your position — your exceptional and high position, Sam — won’t 
you sit down quietly and give us your advice ?” 

He did not sit down, but he took the chair from her and 
placed it before him, his hands on the back so that it made a 
kind of pulpit. 

“ All he’s got to tell us,” said Melenda, “ is, that it’s a shame, 
and we ought to combine and strike.” 

“ It’s the system,” Sam began. “ I am ready to give you the 
best advice, if you’ll only follow it. It’s the rotten competitive 
system ; you’ve got to abolish that. As for you girls combining 
and striking, you won’t do it. I told you once to combine, but 
now I see that women ain’t educated up to combination. Com- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


203 


bination means common-sense ; you haven’t got it ; you haven’t 
the brains nor the courage to do it.” 

“We’ve got our independence, anyhow,” said Melenda. 

“ And much good that does you. Independence ! As if any- 
body is independent who’s got to work for your starvation wa- 
ges. You’re slaves — you’re white slaves. That’s what you are !” 

“ And what are you, then, I should like to know ? You’ve 
got no work to do, I suppose ?” 

“ We cannot alter the system,” said Valentine, again interpos- 
ing ; “ at least, I suppose we cannot alter it without a good deal 
of trouble and delay. Meantime, don’t you think you could de- 
vise something temporary for Melenda and Lizzie until you have 
swept away competition ?” 

“ Who wants his help ?” asked Melenda. “ I tell you he can 
only say it’s a shame. That’s all he ever does say.” 

“ I can’t help them,” said Sam ; “ nobody can help them in 
that way. I tell you again that it’s the fault of the system. 
There are women by thousands no better off. If you can make 
your ladies leave off trying to get things cheap ; if you can make 
your masters contented with a workman’s wage for profit ; if 
you can make the men resolve that the women shall be prop- 
erly paid, and that they must strike for them, and forbid them to 
take less ; well — if you can make everybody think of his neigh- 
bor first — then you may let your system alone, because it won’t 
matter. You can’t do that, and so you must destroy the system.” 

“ Then there seems a very poor chance for the present gener- 
ation of shirt-makers. But what are you going to put in its 
place? And how do you know that it will be better than the 
present plan ?” 

Sam smiled with pity ; girls brought up like Valentine were 
indeed ignorant. 

“You know nothing,” he replied; “I have told you already 
some of our scheme, but I suppose Claude laughed at it and 
told you to forget it at once.” 

“ Tell me again, then, if you please.” 

“ Very well. Now listen. We shall destroy the competitive sys- 
tem. What does that mean ? Why, that there will be no masters 
first, no capitalists, no landowners, no property of any kind.” 

“ Oh 1 then who will pay the workmen ?” 

“ Listen, and don’t interrupt. The state will be the only em- 


204 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


ployer of labor. There will be no rich people. If you have a 
mountain of gold it will not buy you an hour of luxury, nor will 
it save you an hour of labor. The stores will be kept by the 
state, and the food distributed daily. All will work alike, and 
all will live alike. There will be only one rate of wages, and 
men and women alike will be paid, not in money, but by abun- 
dance of everything that is necessary and pleasant to life ; no 
man will be at the beck and call of another. Think of that ! 
Oh, we are on the eve of the most glorious revolution !” He 
swung his arms, and his eyes glowed. “ There will dawn be- 
fore long the most glorious day. Why, there will be no crime 
then, because every man will have all he wants, so that there 
will be no temptation to steal and rob ; and every man will be 
happy, so that there will be no temptation to violence ; and ev- 
ery girl contented and well-fed, so that every girl shall keep her 
self-respect. There will be one offence, and only one, against the 
state — the crime of laziness, which will be punished by bread- 
and-water diet. There will be one education for all ; the gov- 
ernment shall be by the people for the people ; there will be no 
rich class, no better class, no priests, no lazy class ; everybody, 
for a certain time every day, will work at something productive, 
but production will be regulated by committees ; for the rest of 
the time a man will do as he pleases. Some will become artists, 
some will study, some, I suppose, will be preachers, some scien- 
tific men, some actors, some will write books, some will play mu- 
sic ; the only professional men who will not be required to work 
at production will be doctors of medicine and schoolmasters. 
These, of course, will be chosen from the cleverest of the boys. 
The courts of justice will be administered by juries who will sit 
every day all the year round, every man taking his turn ; law 
shall be open to everybody, and will be free, but there will not 
be much left to dispute about when all property is held in trust 
for everybody. All the things that are now luxuries — the rare 
fruits and the costly wines — will be distributed to the sick and 
the old. Books, pictures, music, and plays will be produced for 
nothing at all after working hours. Every man will be taught 
that he must be watchful of his own rights and jealous for the 
community. Every man will take his turn to be a policeman. 
There will be no other distinctions among men than those which 
nature has created: for some will be strong and some weak, 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


205 


some Tvill be quick and some slow. But there will be no titles, 
no aristocracy, no class, and no pride of one man over another. 
Think of it ! No more poverty, no more disease from luxury 
or from privation, no more ignorance, no more indolence, no 
more vice ! Think of it, I say, if ever you think of anything.” 

He paused, not because he was exhausted, but because he 
wanted, naturally, to observe the effect of his oration. 

Melenda pretended that she was not listening. But she was. 
She listened against her will ; she could not tell that the thing 
was as yet only a dream, and could never be realized in her own 
time. Sam’s words filled her soul with vague hopes and a warm 
glow ; and he looked so grand while he spoke that she was proud 
of him, and forgave him for his impatience and contempt. Liz- 
zie, for her part, was wholly unmoved. She thought of nothing 
but of Sam’s advice to be discontented and to compare Valen- 
tine’s frock with her own. It was right, then, to be angry, and 
to ask why she must live on slops and go in rags, and Valentine 
lived like a lady. 

As for Valentine, it seemed to her as if in this squalid room 
the words had altogether a new force and meaning. In Claude’s 
chambers she had only half perceived their significance, but here 
— in the presence of the two girls — they fell upon her ears like 
the first preaching of a new gospel. What sacrifice would be 
too great to bring about the state of things pictured by this 
young apostle ? Surely there has never been since the world 
began any dream more generous and more noble than this of the 
Socialist, insomuch that there are some who think that it was 
first revealed to the world by the Son of God himself. It is so 
beautiful that it will never be suffered to be forgotten ; so beau- 
tiful that mankind will henceforth be continually occupied in 
trying to make it a practical reality ; and, with every successive 
failure, will always be drawing nearer and nearer to the goal, 
until at last, if the kind gods consent, even after many years 
and many generations, it shall be won, and with it the kingdom 
long talked of and little understood. But those who expect it 
in this their lifetime might as well expect the kingdom of heaven. 

“ Thank you, Sam,” said Valentine, bringing herself back to 
the present with an effort. “ But this is a scheme for the far 
future.” 

“ No, it is for the present. Not to-day, perhaps, nor to-mor* 

O 


206 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


row, but before your hair is gray it will be realized over the 
whole world.” 

“ Meantime what are Melenda and Lizzie to do ?” 

“ We’ve got to go on working,” said the latter. 

“ What will you do meantime for your sister, Sam ?” 

“ Melenda may — she may — ” he made a heroic effort, “ well, 
she may come and live with me if she’ll behave.” 

“ I sha’n’t then, there ! 1 won’t live with anybody, and I 

won’t behave, and I’ll go in and out just as I please.” 

“ Can you not find any better way of life for them ?” Valen- 
tine persisted. 

“ No, I can’t. There isn’t any better work for girls who can 
only sew. You must alter the system. The work and the wages 
are getting worse instead of better. The worse they get, the 
more injustice there is, the sooner will be the end. You must 
begin with the beginning, I tell you. Destroy capital and abol- 
ish property. But what do you care for the people ?” 

“ I care for this room, at least, and the people in it. Come, 
Sam, give me credit for a little humanity. I care for those of 
the people whom I know. Isn’t that enough for a beginning? 
How if we were all to do as much ? Perhaps there would be no 
need to alter the system.” 

“ You talk like a woman. Well, then ” — he picked up his hat, 
which he had fiung on the floor at the earlier stage of the dis- 
cussion — “I’ve made my offer. If Melenda likes to accept it, 
she can. If not, she will please herself. I’m going. Good- 
night, Melenda.” 

“ Will you let me walk with you a little way ?” Valentine asked. 

“ Just as you like.” It seems an ungracious way of putting 
it, but what he meant was simple consent. 

They walked down Hoxton Street, across Old Street, and along 
the Curtain Road, where the furniture places were closed, and 
the street quiet, and the German journeymen were out of sight 
in some hidden dens, smoking pipes and dreaming, like Sam, of a 
new world. 

“ You belong to the other side,” he said, after a while. “ That 
is very certain. Yet I should like to talk to you ; but there — 
it is no use, I suppose. You’ve been brought up in their way, 
and because it’s an easy life you think it is beautiful.” 

“ I only know of one side.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


207 


“That’s rubbish. In all history there’s always two sides: 
there’s the tyrant and there’s the slave ; there’s the oppressor 
and there’s the oppressed ; there’s the rich and there’s the poor ; 
there’s the workman and there’s the master. The Lord didn’t 
make simple man, you see ; he made two classes. There were 
two Adams. That’s what they want us to believe. The land 
belongs to one of them, and the duty of tilling it for nothing to 
the other. Oh, yes, I know the talk. There’s two classes when 
we are quiet ; there’s only one class when it comes to keeping 
them contented. Wait till we get our turn.” 

“ In your scheme, Sam, no one is to be lazy, no one is to shirk 
work, and the best men in the country will think it their highest 
privilege to work for all. I understand you to mean this. Yes. 
It is very beautiful. But how are you going to teach and to 
discipline the people and keep them up to the mark ?” 

“ Oh !” Sam replied, superior. “ Why, the very question 
shows your ignorance. You don’t understand the first elements 
of our party. Don’t you see that there will be no necessity for 
teaching at all — that the very establishment of justice for the 
first time in the history of the world — free and equal justice, 
with no favors to any, will create such a grand, universal jeal- 
ousy that all injustice of every kind will be made impossible ? 
There never has been any justice hitherto. There have been 
laws and lawyers, and decisions of courts have been sold to the 
highest bidders. But there has been no justice. It will be such 
a beautiful thing that everybody will watch everybody else and 
himself as well, to see that there is no shirking of duty. There 
will be an irresistible determination ; but, of course, you cannot 
understand the force of the will of the people.” 

“ Well,” said Valentine, to whom the talk about the irresisti- 
ble will of the people was a new thing — and indeed it is strange 
that, while cultivated and educated men have never agreed to- 
gether to have a will of their own and to pronounce it, we are 
constantly told that the rough and ignorant are thinking as one 
man, and acting together with one consent and in such beautiful 
unanimity — “ well, then, the will of the people, I suppose, will 
order everybody to be equally good, and the order will be obeyed 
without any difficulty. Why, it will be a return to the Prom- 
ised Land. No, it will be nothing short of a return to the Gar- 
den of Eden. And, Sam, just think what a discovery you have 


208 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


made 1 The flaming sword which turns every way in the hands 
of the cherubim is nothing else than the competitive system.” 

“ As you like,” Sam replied, a little sulkily. There was just a 
faint hint of ridicule in Valentine’s words. No prophet can abide 
ridicule. “ I don’t care what you call it. Call it what you please. 
Only don’t pretend that you misunderstand the meaning.” 

“ Sam, you are so strong and brave ” — Valentine laid her hand 
upon his arm — “ you are so clever, you know so much, that I am 
sure you can help us if you think it over. Never mind the com- 
petitive system ; that will take a good many years to destroy, I 
am sure, and perhaps it will outlast our time. Try to And some 
readier way to help those girls. Consider, one of them is dying 
slowly; we can’t save her; we can only make her easier; the 
other two are wasting their lives in the most terrible poverty. I 
could give them money, but, indeed, it is not alms they want. 
Melenda will not have it. Won’t you try to help them ? Think, 
Sam, oh think ” — she laid her hand upon his arm — “ of their 
rags and their misery, and try to help them.” 

“ I do think of their rags. Good God ! Valentine, or Polly, 
or whatever they call you, I think of their rags and their misery 
for w’^eeks together after I have seen Melenda.” 

“ Then I wish, Sam, that you saw her every day.” 

“ If I did I should only hate the system more and more. That 
other girl — she’ll die, I suppose.” 

“ Yes, she must die. Melenda is stronger. The one who will 
go next is Lizzie, unless something can be done.” 

“ There’s only* one thing that can be done — destroy the com- 
petitive system. Abolish property. Sweep away capital, lands, 
and church, and masters. Give Socialism a fair start.” 

Nothing more could be got out of him. A mathematician, 
we know, tries his theory on elementary cases ; Socialism, and 
the ladies and gentlemen who construct, with infinite labor, con- 
stitutions, schemes, and plans for the universal good, do not. 
The simple case is beyond them. They are full of rage against 
the old system, but their indignation is expended in deepening 
their political convictions. 

There was once another man who went down the Jericho road 
and fell among thieves. First there passed by the priest, just as 
in the former case, his scornful chin in the air ; and then the 
Levite followed. Now this Levite did not immediately pass by. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


209 


but be stopped' and inquired carefully into the particulars of the 
case, and made full notes of them, and then he went his way, 
and out of the notes he compiled a most tremendous oration, 
eloquent, fiery, and convincing, which he delivered at a meeting 
of the Democratic Federal Union, on the wretched system under 
which robbers are suffered to exist, and propounded another 
system, by means of which there would be no more robbers in 
the land at all. And yet the old system goes on still, and still 
we see coming along the hot and thirsty road the Samaritan 
with his nimble twopence. 

“Good-night, Sam,” Valentine said, coldly; “I ask you for 
advice, and you offer me the chance of a new system. Go away 
and rail at competition while we look after its victims.” 


CHAPTER X. 

THE REVEREND RANDAL SMITH. 

The assistant priest of St. Agatha’s — this was the church 
where the morning congregation did not contain a single man — 
was at this time — he has just been promoted to the more inde- 
pendent sphere of a mission church — the Rev. Randal Smith. 
It was he who ran up the stairs when Valentine was singing in 
order to discover the secret of this strange thing. 

This young gentleman became, by a gradual and natural de- 
velopment of events, one of Valentine’s friends. Their friend- 
ship, it is true, was based upon what the doctor maintained to 
be the true basis of all friendship — self-interest. He first intro- 
duced himself to her in the street — there was no other common 
place of meeting — stopping before her and half lifting his hat. 
It was one of those sweet things in felt, with a very broad, fiat 
brim and strings and a tassel, and he took it off with the doubt- 
ful courtesy which certain Englishmen yield to the uncertain 
person, as if it were a disgrace to lift the hat to any under a 
recognized social position. This prejudice will vanish when the 
board schools condescend to teach manners, and the working- 
man has learned to lift his hat to the working-woman. 

“ I beg your pardon — ” 

He affected the quick, breathless manner adopted by many 


210 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


young clergymen and by some young masters in public schools. 
It is a manner which may mean anything, like an algebraical 
symbol — perhaps that is the reason why it has been adopted — 
but it is really understood to be a “ note,” or outward and visi- 
ble sign, of earnestness coupled with intellectual superiority. 
At Toynbee Hall, very oddly, it is not recognized, which makes 
one suspect the sincerity and the superiority of that institution. 

“ I beg your pardon. I think I heard you singing the other 
evening at Ivy Lane.” 

“ It is very likely.” 

“ I — I — have also learned ” — it was difficult to believe — “ that 
you are the — the — sister of one of the girls who live there.” 

“ It is possible.” 

He was quite a young man, not more than five or six and 
twenty, slight and small in stature, shaven of cheek and chin, 
pale-faced, insignificant of aspect. As to his creed, he professed 
to belong to the small and narrow sect called Ritualists, and this 
was proclaimed to the general world by the brim of his hat which 
was so broad, and the length of his skirts. By these symbols he 
professed the most decided views as to his own authority, and 
the tremendous powers which he held by virtue of his office, 
though he was really a most simple creature, who would have 
been crushed, had he at all understood or realized the nature of 
his own pretensions, by the mere weight of them ; he had never 
distinguished himself in any way either at school or college ; he 
had read next to nothing, and knew next to nothing, of history, 
literature, or theology ; his creed was narrow, bigoted, unhistori- 
cal, and intolerant ; his manner was fussy, underbred, and full 
of little affectations. With his priestly pretensions and his 
ignorance and his fussiness, he was just exactly the kind of fig- 
ure that scoffers like to put up in a pillory and pelt with epigrams, 
new and old, derisive laughter, mocking questions, and sneers and 
jeers. He was also exactly the kind of man who would not alter 
his course for any amount of epigrams, whether they cut like flints 
or whether they broke in his face like rotten eggs ; and, when 
they took him down from his pillory, he would have gone away 
wondering that the world could be so sinful as actually to scoff 
and sniff at the sacerdotal office. 

In other respects this assistant priest belonged to a kind of 
mortal which has never been extinct or unknown among us, and 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


211 


of late seems to have become common. It is not the cleverest 
kind, nor is it the most learned, the most critical, the most log- 
ical, or the most capable of argument. But it is a kind which 
has one great distinctive quality : it has perceived very plainly 
that there is a kind of life, possible to all who choose to follow 
it, which is an imitation, however humble, of a certain great Ex- 
emplar. In fact, no hermit, no solitary, no friar of orders, gray, 
black, white, blue, green, yellow, buff, indigo, magenta, mauve, or 
alezan, ever more diligently followed that Exemplar than do the 
men of this kind. At the age of twenty-three, that is to say, as 
early as it is permitted to them, they absolutely renounce forever 
the world and all its delights ; they give up society, culture, 
learning, art, and pleasures of every kind; they plunge head 
foremost into a vast ocean, mirky and cloudy, whose waves have 
no brightness and whose waters know no smiles ; they become, 
in fact, assistant priest or curate, whichever they prefer to be 
called, in a parish of poverty ; they are the slaves, all day long, 
of the people ; they cease to have any individual life ; they have 
no longer any pursuits. 

It is a comparatively unimportant detail in such a life that 
the man has a church where he must perform certain duties. 
Yet these take time ; he has to read prayers, or to sing matins 
and evensong, if he prefers that way of describing the function ; 
he marries and baptizes ; he has once a week to provide a dis- 
course always full of new thoughts, powerful logic, and words 
which burn — at least, these things are expected. It does not 
really matter in the least what he preaches in places like Hox- 
ton, because no one ever goes to church. Generally, he preaches 
a set of doctrines which the British working-man is just as like- 
ly to embrace as he is to abandon the franchise, or to dissolve 
his trade unions, or to give up his beer, or to join goody clubs. 
But his real work is outside his church. He is the almoner of 
the parish ; he is always administering charitable funds, finding 
out deserving cases, and dividing eighteenpence equally among 
thirteen poor people ; he is a professor of the conduct of life ; 
because weaker brethren get drunk he has to wear a nasty little 
blue ribbon, and may not look upon the amber and the froth of 
the cheerful pewter ; because there are so many to be helped, and 
so little to help them with, he lives with the greatest frugality, 
and gives away all that he can spare, being paid for the most 


212 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


part in the coin of ingratitude ; he has got schools to visit ; of 
late years he has been expected — who has neither art nor culture 
— to become the prophet of culture and the fosterer of art ; and 
now, on top of all these duties, he has had imposed upon him the 
care of providing and devising amusement, holidays, excursionsj 
concerts, clubs, and institutes for the young and old. He works 
all day long and regrets that there are not more than sixteen 
hours available ; he is always cheerful. And for the sake of 
what he does and the life he leads, let us by no means laugh at 
this young man, but suffer him without sneers or epigrams to 
believe what it pleases his unhistorical soul to think he believes, 
so long as he does not try to make us acknowledge that he car- 
ries about in his own little waistcoat pocket, on the same bunch 
as his latchkey, the keys of the gates of heaven. 

“ I — I — I heard you sing,” he repeated. “ And I was much 
pleased. For an untrained voice — ” 

“ Quite so,” said Valentine, gravely. But there was in her 
eyes a light for which there is no prettier word, I regret to say, 
than the word “ twinkle.” Nothing is more delightful than the 
sudden awakening to a sense of the humorous situation shown 
by the twinkle of a girl’s bright eyes. 

“ But perhaps you have been trained. I beg your pardon.” 

“ Pray go on.” 

“ I have an institute of working-boys. It occurred to me that 
perhaps — perhaps — would you sing to them ?” 

“ I do not know. Will you show me your institute ?” 

He led her into one of the streets which branch off right and 
left, and stopped at a corner house. 

“ This is the place,” he said. “ We get the working-lads here, 
and teach them and amuse them in the evening.” 

The door opened, without the intervention of hall or passage, 
into a good-sized room of irregular shape, fitted with benches 
and one or two narrow tables ; at one end was a great fireplace 
with texts displayed above it, and at the other end was a low 
platform with a piano. On the walls at the end were a few 
shelves which formed the boys’ library. 

“ Hp-stairs,” said the young clergyman, his eyes kindling as 
he showed his beloved institute, “ there are class-rooms and a 
bagatelle-board, where the older lads may smoke if they like ; 
outside in fhe yard is a gymnasium. This is our common sit- 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


213 


ting and reading room, where we sometimes try singing. Un- 
fortunately I was never taught to sing or play. I can intone of 
course, but I cannot sing, and as for accompaniment I am trying 
to learn a few simple chords. Perhaps I could help out with 
something for you.” 

“ Let me hear you,” said Valentine. 

His knowledge of the art was limited and his simple chords 
were few. He confessed that he rose every morning at six in 
order to acquire some mastery over the instrument, but as yet 
with small success. 

“ What do you do with your boys ?” she asked him. 

It appeared on explanation that his evenings were wholly de- 
voted to the care of those boys, with whom he worked, read, 
taught, and played. While he spoke of them his face lit up, he 
forgot the little mannerism of speech and became natural. This 
was the work that he loved. 

Valentine felt that she stood on the threshold of a new kind 
of life. She went on to question him. He had other work, 
and a great deal of it, of a much less interesting kind. He 
ought to have had nothing to do but to look after the boys, 
whose minds he was filling with thoughts which would lead some 
of them whither he could not guess. But he had, besides, the 
church services every day, sick people to visit, poor people to re- 
lieve, a mission chapel to serve in some slum or other, addresses 
to prepare — an endless round of work, with no rest for a single 
day in the week and no hope that it would ever grow lighter. 

“It is a hard life,” said Valentine, wondering at the courage 
of those who embrace such a life. 

“ It is my work,” he replied, lapsing into breathlessness and 
folding his hands, after the unreal manner of his kind. Why 
will they fold their hands ? 

Valentine thought that he belonged to those heroes who are 
best left unseen. There are many such, and when they die their 
lives read most beautifully. 

She sat down and suffered her fingers to ramble over the keys 
thinking of this man and his life. Presently she looked up. “ I 
will sing for your boys whenever you please.” 

“ Thank you.” 

“ Do you know all the people in your parish ? Do you know 
the working-women ?” 


214 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ I try to know them all,” he replied, breathlessly. “ It is my 
duty to know them all. The parish clergy are in charge of them.” 

“ Do you ever think of them ? Can you tell me how anything 
can he done for them ?” 

“ If they would come to church, and submit to discipline.” 

“ I do not speak of their religion, but of their material welfare. 
Can anything be done to get them better wages and easier work ?” 

“ I do not know. It is not the duty of a parish priest to con- 
sider the subject of work.” 

“You are among these poor working-women all day long, and 
yet you have never considered the subject ? Surely it must force 
itself upon you ?” 

“ What would be the use ? I can do nothing. I suppose there 
must always be poverty — ‘ The poor ye have always with you.’ ” 

“ Oh !” Valentine cried, impatiently. “ Nobody ever tries to 
help. I have asked a schoolmaster, and a doctor, and a scholar, 
and now I have asked a clergyman ; and there is no help in any 
of them. Does nobody in the world care what becomes of the 
working- women ?” 

“ The Church cares for all alike,” he replied, still breathless 
and superior. 

She bade him good-morning and left him. There was then 
no help to be got from man, not even from those who go con- 
tinually among the people, and see their suffering and the pa- 
tience of the girls every day. There are men and women work- 
ing perpetually for every other possible class, but none for the 
work-girl. She alone is left unprotected and unheeded, and no 
man regardeth her. 

Then an oracle came to her; the true oracle is unsuspected 
and unsought — sudden. You must not go and inquire at Delphx 
any more. The voice comes to you of its own accord. It came to 
Valentine from an old lady. There were two of them standing oxi 
the curbstone ; one carried a loaf under her apron and the othe'^ 
a key. They were clean and respectable old ladies. As Valentin^ 
passed them, one said to the other, “No, mum, it’s no use expecb 
ing it ; and if you want a thing done, you must do it yourself.’' 

These words Valentine rightly and piously accepted as an 
oracle or voice from heaven. 

The assistant priest meanwhile stood at the door of his insti- 
tute, and watched her walking down the street with buoyant step 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


215 


and fearless carriage. I suppose lie had seen young ladies 
before, but it seemed a long time, and for the space of two min- 
utes and a half he allowed his thoughts to follow the way of most 
young men’s thoughts in spring, though it was now full summer. 
In that brief interval he enjoyed in imagination a whole twelve 
months at least of the blessed life, the life of love and ease and 
happiness, with such a companion as Valentine. At five-and- 
twenty there are moments when all other things, and especially 
the great renunciation, seem stark staring foolishness compared 
with the life of love. I believe that all women in all ages have 
secretly entertained this doctrine, and that all men have from 
time to time been tempted by it. The Light of Asia experienced 
many such painful moments of doubt, though his biographers 
have passed them over. We know, besides, how hermits and 
holy men have been wont to keep tubs of ice-cold water and 
deep snowdrifts ready against these attacks of the Devil. A 
terrible thing, indeed, should a young man, after he has gone 
a-hermiting, meanly give it up and sneak back to his sweetheart ! 

Now, as Valentine walked along the street, just after she re- 
ceived the oracle, she encountered the very last man she would 
have expected to meet in Hoxton. 

“ You here, Mr. Conyers !” 

It was, in fact, Mr. Conyers himself, and the great man ap- 
peared to be confused at the meeting. He actually blushed and 
stammered. 

“ I, yes, yes, I am here. And you Miss Valentine ?” 

“ I am staying with some friends.” 

“Yes, I remember. Your sister told me. I thought, how- 
ever, you were gone to Whitechapel. Everybody goes to White- 
chapel now. I am travelling about London in search of a new 
face for my picture. All the faces somehow seem to have been 
used up.” 

“ Have you succeeded ?” 

“ I hardly know yet.” 

She left him and went on her way. 

“ She is staying with friends.” Mr. Conyers looked after her 
thoughtfully. “ I am glad she didn’t meet me five minutes ago, 
with that big-eyed girl. It might have been awkward. She is 
staying with friends — her own people. Violet told me as much, 
and Claude is looking after her. Is it likely that Lady Mildred 


216 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


would suffer her own daughter to live in such a place as this 
and be looked after by Claude ? Lady Mildred may be liberal 
in her views, but she must think of her daughter’s reputation. 
Oh, there cannot be any longer a doubt.” 

A sweet smile — the smile of contentment — played upon his 
lips. He was thinking of Beatrice Eldridge and of himself, and 
of a perfectly easy life, with nothing to do but to enjoy and to 
develop, and then slowly to ripen and to decay. “I think Val- 
entine is better-looking than Violet,” he murmured ; “ but with 
such a hatful of money, who would make comparisons ?” 

Meantime the big-eyed girl, who was none other than Lizzie, 
strolled slowly homewards — it was her dinner-hour — thinking 
of the words that she had heard once more and for the tenth 
time, because this man would not leave her alone. *The tempta- 
tion to have done with her hard and wretched work had grown 
almost to a desperate yearning for ease. It seemed to lie at her 
feet ready to be picked up. The more she saw of Valentine the 
more she longed to be even as she was. The discontent which 
Sam wished for all women had seized upon her, but without pro- 
ducing quite the effect which he anticipated. Lizzie had no de- 
sire to combine with other girls. She wished, on the other hand, 
to run quite away from them, and never to have anything more 
to do with them. 

In the evening Valentine sang to the boys. There were 
twenty or thirty of them with the Reverend Randal Smith. 
She played to them first, and then she sang to them, not one or 
two, but a dozen rattling good songs which went straight to the 
boys’ hearts and made them all sit with open mouths. And be- 
fore she sang her last song, which was that pretty old ditty about 
Sally in our Alley, she made a little speech. 

“ Boys,” she said, “ you will soon be men and able to look out 
for yourselves. Will you remember your sisters, the girls who 
cannot help themselves? You will have reasonable hours and 
good pay ; they will have to work all day long for cruel pay. 
It is your business to help them — I don’t know how yet — but 
you must find out if others cannot. They will be your sweet- 
hearts. Can you bear to think that the girls you love are cruelly 
neglected and shamefully ill-used?” Perhaps you will be able 
to make a union for them. Think of them. I shall come and 
sing to you again if I am allowed. Every time I come I will 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


217 


remind you of your duty towards your sisters — the girls who 
work. Now I will sing you a song all about one of them and 
her sweetheart.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

A DEAD man’s STEPS. 

In the multitude of counsellors, as we know, purposes are es- 
tablished. Hitherto, however, Valentine’s counsellors had ad- 
vanced her no more than those of the patriarch Job. She looked 
from one to the other, asking in vain the questions which every 
one asks when he begins to understand the simple facts. But 
there was no answer from any, save from Sam, and he proposed 
to meet the case by simply knocking down the house of cards 
and building it up again. 

She thought of the old lady in the almshouse. Perhaps from 
her she might get something practical, something that would help 
Melenda at least, something short of Sam’s universal revolution 
and the doctor’s universal confederation of labor. It is by a 
natural instinct that mankind in all ages, and at every juncture, 
have sought the advice of old women, because none are so wise 
as to the conduct of life, especially— which is not generally 
known — old women in almshouses. Their superiority is due to 
the happy circumstance that they have nothing to do but to 
observe, to reflect, and to piece together their experiences. 

One must not, however, suppose that all old women know 
everything. Some are specialists ; as, for example, those who 
know the art of healing and the properties of herbs. Then there 
are those who understand the management of man ; it is a secret, 
and one man, at least, who has learned this secret, will never re- 
veal it ; but it is a very simple secret, the management of man 
in all his characters, as brother, lover, father, and husband. Some, 
again, are deeply versed in the treatment of tender infants. Some 
can read and foretell the future, plain and clear, for all inquirers, 
either by the cards, or by the hand, or by signs and omens, or 
by the appearance of birds. Some can judge, with the greatest 
accuracy, of character from the face, or a single feature in the 
face, or from the voice, or the hand, or the foot. Some can read 
10 


218 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


thoughts, and can advise a man by knowing exactly what is pass- 
ing in his mind. Some can charm warts and order rheumatism 
to vanish ; and some can inform the inquirer exactly, and with- 
out any oracular indefiniteness, whether any proposed course of 
action will be lucky or unlucky. They are Sibyls every one. I 
do not know what advice Mrs. Monument would have given to 
Valentine’s questions, because, most unfortunately, she was pre- 
vented from putting any by a very singular occurrence. 

It was this : Valentine found the old lady sitting alone, and 
in a strange state of nervous agitation, with shaking hands and 
trembling lips — in the condition known to inebriates as “ jumpy.” 

What’s the matter, mother ?” she asked. “Your hands are 
trembling, and so are your lips. Are you ill ?” 

“No, Polly, no. Oh, thank Heaven you’ve come, my dear! 
I don’t know myself to-day. When you spoke just now I ac- 
tually thought it was her ladyship’s voice, and I never even heard 
your step outside. Give me your hand, child. There ! I feel 
safe while you are here.” 

“ Why, mother, what is it ?” 

“ I sent Rhoder away after dinner, because I couldn’t bear her 
fidgets. I would rather go without my tea. And I went into 
the chapel ; but I couldn’t get any rest. And, oh, dear, dear ! 
how glad I am you’ve come, Polly !” 

“ Well, mother, you will tell me presently when you feel a lit- 
tle stronger. You shall have your tea earlier this afternoon. 1 
want to talk to you about Melenda.” 

“ What about Melenda, Polly ? She’s never been the good and 
dutiful daughter that you are. She doesn’t come to see her moth- 
er but once a month, and then she’s always in a rage. She came 
last Sunday and tore round and carried on dreadful about you 
and Lotty. Never mind that. What about Melenda ?” 

“ She is working too hard and living too low. She ought to 
be made to do some other kind of work. What could she try ?” 

“ I always told her — but you might as well talk to a stick or 
a stone — that honest service is the best thing in the world for 
a young woman. What is her freedom after all? She’s free 
to walk the streets and to get into bad company; she’s free 
to learn bad manners, and she’s free to go hungry and ragged. 
Well, my dear, she won’t hear my advice, and — Oh, what’s 
that ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


219 


“ It’s nothing, dear,” said Valentine. “ But, mother, what 
makes you so nervous to-day ?” 

“ I can’t tell you, child. I can’t tell anybody.” 

It was useless to ask her for advice. The old lady was inco- 
herent and incapable of thought. Valentine made haste to get 
ready the tea and to talk on indifferent things. And while she 
talked she saw that her mother either listened with an effort or 
did not listen at all, but suffered her lips to move in silence, while 
the trembling of her hands showed the disquiet of her mind. 

When she had taken tea, which is a sedative and restorative 
of the highest order, the old lady felt herself stronger and 
breathed more freely. 

“ Polly,” she said, “ if you hadn’t come to-day I should have 
gone clean off my poor head, I should.” 

“ Well, mother, wouldn’t you be easier if you told me all the 
trouble ? Is it anything about one of the boys ? Is Joe in dif- 
ficulties ?” 

“ No, no, nothing’s the matter with Joe. And I can’t tell Joe, 
because he would only laugh at me. But I must tell somebody. 
My dear,” she stooped forward and whispered, “ I’ve had a most 
terrible fright.” 

“ A fright ? Did thieves try to break in — here ?” 

“ No, Polly ; no, not thieves. Bless you ! I ain’t afraid of 
thieves. It’s far worse than that.” 

“ What was it ?” 

“ I heard a step, Polly.” 

“ A step ?” 

‘‘ Polly, I can’t tell you ; the young don’t understand what a 
dreadful thing it is to hear a step you haven’t heard for twenty 
years — a dead man’s step — and to wonder why it came and what 
it wanted ; and then to remember all the misery that step might 
have caused if the dead man wasn’t dead. I know he’s dead. 
I’m quite certain of that. Yet I’m terrible put out, my dear; 
if I hadn’t told you I think I must have gone out of my senses, 
so shook I am to-day. Some one I must ha’ told. I couldn’t 
tell Rhoder, because Joe would never forgive me if I did. She’s 
one of them who is never to know. Claude is another, and so 
is Sam.” 

“ Whose step was it like, then ?” 

“ Polly, give me your hand again. Oh, what a blessing you 


220 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


are to me, my dear ! Your Christian name was Marla, because he 
ordered it ; but I’ve always called you Polly, and I always shall. 
It was the step of your own father, my dear, who’s dead and gone.” 

My father ? But since he is dead ” — for the moment her 
thoughts turned to a certain portrait, that, namely, representing 
Sir Lancelot in his uniform as colonel of yeomanry cavalry proud- 
ly bestriding a gallant charger. Then she remembered that, 
unlike any other girl in history, she had, in the mind of most 
people, two fathers. There are many girls who have only one 
father between them ; but Valentine’s is absolutely the only case 
on record in which a girl has had more than one father. “ Why,” 
she added, “ it is twenty years since my father died.” 

“ No, my dear, it is only five years. Joe brought me the news, 
and I cried for joy and thankfulness. Cried for joy, I did.” 

“ Only five years ? But we always thought — ” 

“ I told her ladyship twenty years ago that he was dead. It 
wasn’t true ; and yet he was as good as dead to me and to the 
children ; and to the world as well. I don’t know whether the 
world or me was better pleased that he was dead to everybody. 
I don’t know which of us prayed the hardest that he would 
never come to life again.” 

“ Why, mother, what does this mean ?” The bitterness of 
these words, and the intensity with which they were uttered, 
startled and terrified Valentine. What could they mean? She 
turned pale with a sudden presentiment of evil. 

“ I told Lady Mildred a falsehood. It did her no harm and I 
couldn’t — no, I couldn’t tell her the truth — ber who’d known me 
when I was respectable, and didn’t even guess what had hap- 
pened. It was my secret all to myself and to Joe. There’s some 
things a woman can’t tell. As for the truth, Joe and me knew 
it, and nobody else, and I was then on Hackney Marsh out of 
the way, and there was plenty of time before me even if he 
should come back, and I thought to get the children put out to 
work so as he shouldn’t know where they were nor ever be able 
to do them any harm, or bring shame upon them as he brought 
it on me.” 

“ Do them harm ? Bring shame upon them ? Why ?” 

You don’t know, Polly. But I’ll tell you now, because I can 
talk to you as I can’t to Melenda or the boys ; and oh, my dear, 
I feel the comfort of having a daughter I can talk to.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON, 


221 


“ Go on, motlier,” said Yalentine. 

‘‘ Well, then, my dear, if there was ever a wickeder man than 
your father in the whole world. Lord help his wife and children ! 
And if ever there was a man who was more bent on wicked ways 
and more gloried in his wicked life, I never heard of him.” 

“ Where was he then, when he was dead to you and — ” Here 
she stopped, and her cheek flamed suddenly scarlet as if she had 
received a shameful blow, for she understood where he was. 
Those who are dead to wife and children, yet living; those 
whose living death is a subject of rejoicing in the world, are in — 

“ Mother,” she said, “ he was in prison.” 

“ Hush ! My dear,” her mother whispered, “ not so loud. Yes, 
he was in prison. Hush ! don’t ever say that word out loud again. 
Nobody knows it hut Joe and me. Joe was old enough to know 
when he was took. Thank God, the knowledge of it frightened 
him and helped to make him the sober, steady man he is. No 
one else knows — not Joe’s wife nor yet his children. They don’t 
know. And none of the rest knows, not Sam, nor Claude, nor 
Melenda. Don’t you tell them, Polly — don’t you never tell them. 
Sam’s that proud and set up with his grand position and his suc- 
cess that it would cut him to the heart, and my Claude, too, 
though, of course, he isn’t to compare with Sam. Don’t make 
them hang their proud heads. And Melenda, too — bless the girl 
— with her independence. Don’t shame them, Polly, don’t tell 
them.” 

“ I shall not tell. Oh, mother, why did you tell me ?” she 
asked, impatiently. 

“ When you came here without any play actin’, and leaving 
Miss Beatrice at home with her mar and kind and thoughtful for 
your mother, my dear ; oh, what a blessing it is to have my 
Polly back again ” — Valentine kissed her and fondled her hand, 
penitent already for her impatience — “ full of your soft and lady- 
like ways, my dear, which Melenda couldn’t never learn, living 
as she does, slaving and starving, it came into my head that 
I must some day tell you. What’s the good of having a daugh- 
ter if you can’t tell everything that is in your mind ?” 

“ Tell me everything,” said Yalentine, with a sinking heart. 

Tell me everything, then, if it will relieve your mind, dear.” 

“ I wouldn’t have told you anything, my dear, if it hadn’t been 
for that dreadful step which frightened me out of my wits almost. 

r 


222 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


It was nigli upon the stroke of ten, because I heard the clock 
soon afterwards. I’d forgotten to lock the door ; why, I often 
leave it ajar when I go to bed so as Khoder can get in first thing 
in the morning. I was fast asleep — I must have been asleep 
though I dreamed I was awake, and all of a sudden in my dream 
of being awake I heard his step. It came over the flags within 
the court and walking quickly, as he always walked, stopped at 
my door and so into the house.” 

“ Oh !” Valentine was trembling now because that strange hor- 
ror, which we call the fear of the supernatural, is the most catch- 
ing thing in the world, much more catching than measles. “ Oh ! 
and then you heard his footstep on the flagstones ?” 

“ Yes, and in the house ; the step came into the room below. I 
don’t know how long it lasted because I couldn’t move hand or 
foot, and I couldn’t breathe even, and my tongue was tied and I 
couldn’t open my mouth. Oh dear, it was last night.” She 
stopped, overcome by the recollection of that dreadful dream. 

“ When I came to I got up and crept down-stairs and felt about 
the room. But no one was there. How should there be ? Blind 
people can’t see ghosts, like other people, but they can feel them 
if there’s one about. There was a blind woman once in the vil- 
lage when I was a girl, and they said the reason why she always 
looked frightened was that she was haunted by the ghost of her 
husband. He’d sit beside her bed all night and say nothing, 
and she couldn’t see him, but she felt him there, and if all tales 
about her was true, it served her right. She died young, my 
dear, because she couldn’t bear it. If one blind woman, why not 
two? Perhaps he came repentant. Well, I’m ready to forgive 
him, now he’s dead ; I couldn’t before.” Many Christians re- 
semble Mrs. Monument in this view of forgiveness as a duty. 

“You are quite sure there was no one there?” 

“ Neither man nor ghost was there, and the door was ajar just 
as I’d left it.” 

“ And was nothing stolen ?” 

“ No, my dear ; there isn’t anything worth stealing.” 

“ It was a strange dream,” said Valentine ; “a strange and a 
dreadful dream. Did you hear the step again when you went 
back to bed ?” 

“No, my dear, not again. But I lay awake all night waiting 
for it, though I knew it was only a dream.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


223 


“ Shall I stay with you to-night ?” 

“ No, my dear, I am better now I’ve told you. I am not afraid 
any longer.” 

“ Well, don’t forget to lock and bolt your door.” 

“ Locks and bolts won’t keep out ghosts. And never a lock 
nor a bolt ever made would keep him out when he was alive, 
much less now he’s dead.” 

“ Forget your dream, mother, and tell me more about my fa- 
ther. Tell me all, unless it gives you pain to talk about him.” 

No, my dear, it eases me, because if I don’t talk about him 
I think about him. I almost wish I hadn’t told you anything, 
Polly. It won’t make you any happier to know that. But then 
I was so upset — ” 

“ Yes, mother, it was better for you. I know now that my 
father’s only legacy to his children was a record of disgrace 
which you have mercifully concealed.” 

Disgrace and shame, Polly,” the blind woman echoed. 

Presently she went on again. 

“ When he came to the village first and began courting, my 
head was turned because he was such a handsome lad and I was 
such a homely one. His ways were finicking, as if he was a gen- 
tleman, and there was nothing that he couldn’t do. He’d play 
the fiddle, which he did most heavenly, till you either laughed, 
or cried, or danced, just as he wanted you to do ; he could do 
conjuring tricks, and he’d make you believe whatever rubbish he 
wanted ; he could carve most beautiful in wood ; and at his own 
trade, which was locksmithing, I don’t suppose there was a clev- 
erer lad in the world. Well, I never asked him what he came 
into our parts for, and though there was three houses broke open 
while he was coming and going, nobody ever suspected my 
James, and least of all could I suspect him. And on Sunday 
always in his place at church beside me with his book in his 
hand, so that the vicar thought he was a good young man indeed, 
and everybody told me I was a lucky woman. A proud woman 
I was, I can tell you, when I stood with my man and all the peo- 
ple there to see. Little Lady Mildred herself was brought to 
the wedding because I’d been under-nurse, and she gave me my 
white frock, at least her mother did, and said it was her gift, and 
— there — it’s seven-and-thirty years ago. Joe is six-and-thirty, 
and you are only twenty, but close to twenty-one, being actually 


224 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


fifteen years younger than Joe. My dear,” she interrupted her 
narrative in order to apologize for this difference, “ I know it is 
natural there oughtn’t to he such a distance between the eldest 
and the youngest of five. You ought to be thirty at least by 
now if you had your right. But I couldn’t help it because your 
father, you see, he was generally in the place — ^the place, you 
know, where he died at last.” 

“You mean he was in prison,” said Valentine, stoutly, “ and 
don’t mind about the difference between Joe and me. I dare 
say I shall get to thirty in good time.” 

“ In prison, then, my dear. Now, though we came to London 
at first to look for work, I very soon found out that he hadn’t 
got any regular work, and wouldn’t take it if it was offered. 
Half his time he was away, saying it was country jobs which 
paid him well, and he’d be away sometimes a month at a spell, 
after which there would be a month’s idleness and doing noth- 
ing. But always plenty of money and better living we had than 
many a gentleman’s house.” 

“ Did he have any relations ?” 

“ No ; not any that I ever heard of — some of the books here 
on my shelves belonged, he said, to his father ; and he said his 
father was a gentleman, but what kind of a gentleman he was to 
have such a son I’m sure I don’t know. Well, Polly, I lived, as 
they say, in Fool’s Paradise ; for he never got drunk and he 
didn’t use language and he was not a striker, and though he 
would only work when he was obliged, and left me so much 
alone, I loved him and thought I was the happiest woman in the 
world. Happy ? Yes, like the innocent lambs in the fields. It 
was when Joe was a baby of three months that I found out the 
truth. He got ten years ” — Valentine shuddered — “ ten years. 
It was a bad burglary. His box of tools was in our lodgings 
and a chest full of stolen things, and they talked of trying me 
along with him, but they didn’t. My dear, I never so much as 
suspected. Ten years ! Then I took Joe and all the money that 
I had and went away to Hackney Marsh, and took my maiden 
name again, and began with the washing.” 

“ And after his ten years he came back again, I suppose ?” 

“ Before then ; he came back with a ticket-of-leave, and you 
may be sure he found me out. I don’t know how, but he did ; 
and you might as well try to hide a rabbit from a weasel as try 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


225 


to hide anything from that man. He came bach, my dear ; and 
then he lived a very strange life. For he told me he had re- 
formed, and yet he would stay away for a month at a time, and 
a fine reform it was. He kept quiet when he was at home and 
gave out to the neighbors he was a seafaring man, and he most- 
ly wore a blue jacket. He never took any of my money and I 
wouldn’t touch none of his, and he never had any meals in the 
house, but he’d sit in the parlor and read his books, and he’d 
smoke cigars and drink port wine like a gentleman, all by him- 
self. Twice he went away and didn’t come back for eighteen 
months, so I supposed he’d been took again. But after each 
spell back he came, and that went on, my dear, for seven long 
years — seven years — me asking no questions, and him tell- 
ing no lies, and coming and going just as he pleased. Seven 
years. Sam came first, and then Claude, and then Melenda. 
But before you were born, my dear, though not before your 
name was fixed, which was Marla, as I’ve told you often, he was 
took again. It was another burglary, I know, with violence, and 
he got five-and-twenty years, which Joe said was as good as a 
Kfer, and we needn’t expect to see him ever again.” 

Is that all ?” 

“ That’s all, my dear. And now you and me have got that 
secret between us, and we are never to let the two boys nor 
Melenda know ; are we ?” 

Never to let the boys know,” said Valentine. Oh, poor 
Claude !” 

“ If they never find it out it won’t matter to them, will it ?” 
said his mother. “ Joe’s wife and the children don’t know it. 
Nobody knows it except you and me and Joe. Sometimes I 
think it’s made Joe the good son he’s always been to me, because 
we’ve had that secret to ourselves.” 

Since he is dead — but is he dead ?” 

“Yes, he is dead,” she replied, quickly; “Joe heard that for 
certain. There’s no doubt about that.” 

“ Did he never write to you ?” 

“ Never, and I’ll tell you why. It was because he thought my 
cottage was such a good hiding-place where he could come and 
go as he pleased and never be suspected at all, and me living 
under another name. Only mind, I wouldn’t have any boxes 
brought home with him. You see, if he’d written to me the 
10 * 


226 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


police would have known where to look for him. Why, I’ve 
known him — oh, a dozen times — talk to the policeman over the 
garden-palings about himself and his own burglaries as cool as 
you please.” 

“ What was his name ?” 

His name was Carey — James Carey. Why, my dear, you are 
too young to remember it, hut thirty years ago the newspapers 
were full of his name, and the whole country was ringing with 
his burglaries. They wrote a life of him and sold it for a penny 
all over London. But of course you’ve never seen the book.” 

No. Valentine had little wish to see that biographical work. 
Yet there was just a touch of pride in the old woman’s mention 
of that book. 

“ Look on the shelves, Polly. There are some of his hooks. 
You will find his father’s name in them. At least he said they 
were his father’s books ; but who knows what his name really 
was, nor what was his history ?” 

Valentine had remarked a row of well-hound hooks on her 
first visit ; chiefiy, I suppose, because books are not too often 
met with in a Tottenham almshouse. Now she took them down 
and examined them. The first book was the “ Divina Comme- 
dia di Dante Alighieri,” in Italian ; a beautifully bound copy of 
a scarce edition, as Valentine knew. One does not usually ex- 
pect to find rare editions in an almshouse. She passed on to 
the next on the shelf. This was “ Cupid and Psyche, English’d 
from the Latin of Apuleius,” quarto, in calf, with the date 1741. 
Then came “ Froissart’s Chronicles,” in four goodly volumes, 
quarto, and half -calf, the translations of Johnnes. After this 
came an odd volume of Hutchinson’s “ Durham then another 
odd volume of La Fontaine’s “ Contes et Nouvelles,” illustrated 
very beautifully ; then two or three volumes of Florian’s works, 
magnificently bound. There were others, but Valentine stopped 
there because she suddenly apprehended the possible meaning 
of this thing. 

If I desired to possess, and intended to show about for the 
gratification of vanity and the support of my pretensions to 
gentle birth, something solid and not to be disputed, I should 
not content myself with the ordinary well-known methods. I 
might, like some of my neighbors, invent and circulate family 
anecdotes which unkind friends would proceed to quote and to 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


227 


misrepresent in a nasty, sniggering spirit. I might, also, as they 
do, adorn my rooms with family portraits which may be had at 
a reasonable figure, and are effective so long as there exists a 
friendly disposition to a give-and-take credulity. I might, in 
addition, exhibit a family pedigree, going back to the Wars of 
the Roses at least, and beginning with a valiant knight supposed 
to be connected with a very illustrious house ; this, too, may be 
procured for a small sum, beautifully written on parchment, and 
adorned with shields. I should certainly stick up, wherever 
there was room for them, coats of mail, with trophies of spears, 
shields, bucklers, and pikes, all family heirlooms, and descend- 
ing in the male line direct from the Crusaders and Coeur de 
Lion. I should buy old silver mugs, and have my arms en- 
graved upon them with the names of ancestors. These things 
are all useful in their way, but they want corroboration. There- 
fore I should proceed to search for, and to buy, old books of 
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, without 
names in them^ and in these books I should write the names of 
my ancestors in a pale brown ink, with the date of acquisition 
and a remark or two in Latin. Nothing is so effective as Latin. 
I should arrange them upon a shelf about the average height of 
the human eye, which is five feet seven inches, and I should say, 
when my friends took them down curiously, “ Alas ! all that I 
have been able to save of the old family library. You will find 
the names of one or two of my people there. See ! here is good 
old Sir Simon, knighted by Queen Bess, at Tilbury.” There 
might be jealousies and envyings, and unkind remembrance of 
one’s grandfather and the shop ; but there would be no fiouts 
or jeers, because nothing more effectually proves the antiquity 
of the house than old books formerly belonging to ancestors. 
For modest men it is perhaps sufficient to prove that your grand- 
father could read Latin and Italian ; therefore, books only eighty 
years of age might be purchased in order to serve that purpose. 

Valentine opened the volumes. In each one there was a book 
plate with a coat-of-arms, and under the shield in each was writ- 
ten the name of “ Francis Denison Carey.” Therefore the said 
Francis must have known Italian and French at least, and he 
must have been fond of books and bindings, and illustrations, 
and he must have taken an interest in county history, and there- 
fore, without doubt, he must have been a gentleman by birth. 


228 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


‘‘Were these books my father’s?” she asked. 

“They were all his, ray dear, and his father’s before him.” 

“ Who was his father ?” 

“ I don’t know, my dear, because he never told me. I’ve al- 
ways thought my husband must have been a love-child. He 
left them with me wherever he went. To be sure he couldn’t 
take them with him when he — ” 

“ No,” said Valentine, “ certainly he could not.” 

Even an author’s works cannot follow him into that place, 
though they may, and generally do, accompany him to the grave. 

“ Then his father was a gentleman.” 

“So he always said, my dear. But a love-child I think he 
must have been. And he said that he’d got fine relations ; and 
then he’d laugh and boast that he was bringing great honor on 
the family, though they would do nothing for him.” 

“ It is strange,” said Valentine. “ Did he never explain how 
he came to fall so low ?” 

“ No, never ; and as to being fallen low, he pretended he’d 
risen high, and couldn’t own that his way of living was shame- 
ful and disgraceful. ‘Why,’ he said, a dozen times after he 
pretended to be reformed, and could talk Scripture by the half- 
hour — ‘ why,’ he said, ‘ it’s me ■ against the world ; my clever- 
ness against your locks, and your laws, and your police. And 
I’m the head of them all. There’s not a man in the profession 
but envies me and admires me. Who is there that’s got into 
so many houses as I have ? Who’s defied the police as I have ?’ 
That’s the way he used to go on, and as to living by honest 
work, it was nothing but slaving for a slave-driver ; if he couldn’t 
be a slave-driver he wouldn’t be a slave.” 

“ And was he any the richer for his robberies ?” 

“ I don’t know, my dear, where the money went, because I 
never asked. But it went in wickedness, I dare say.” 

“ Oh !” cried Valentine, stung by a sudden terror. “ Suppose 
he wasn’t dead after all ; what misery to see him appear again !” 

“ He is dead,” said the widow, quietly. “ It was his ghost 
whose step I heard. Well may he walk and be uneasy. If he 
wasn’t dead he’d ha’ been out before now. But I know very 
well that he’s dead and buried. And, oh, Polly, I’m half sorry 
after all that I told you !” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


229 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE WOOING OF THE SPHINX. 

No intelligence, letter, or news of any kind was to come from 
her own people to Valentine during her retreat. She was to be 
completely cut off ; as much as if she had been expelled the 
family circle. A hard measure, yet Lady Mildred was a wise wom- 
an, and no doubt had her reasons. Valentine was to hear noth- 
ing, whatever happened. With the exception of one episode, 
very little, indeed, happened. Lady Mildred and Violet went to 
Ilfracombe, and presently Mr. Conyers made his appearance 
there. This was the single episode of interest. He stayed for 
three weeks ; and he came, as was immediately apparent, with 
the intention of making himself, if possible, pleasing to Violet. 

Ilfracombe in the season is an admirable place in which to 
study with thoughtfulness the character and the charms of a 
young lady, especially if she be not surrounded by other young 
ladies, and if she is permitted a certain amount of freedom, and 
if there are no other students of the same young lady about the 
place. In all these respects Mr. Conyers had the greatest pos- 
sible advantages ; he had the field to himself, and he was al- 
lowed every opportunity of carrying on this singularly attractive 
study. He walked with Lady Mildred and Violet on the Cap- 
stone Rock; he drove about the country with them; and he 
accompanied Violet when she went sketching; he was even 
permitted to go sailing with her. She had a boat of her own, 
and a boatman specially engaged for her own service. But there 
is generally a swell upon the ocean off Ilfracombe, and too often 
while Violet sat, rope in hand, bright of eye, and light of heart, 
when the white sail flew round the headlands, the young man 
beside her was fain to preserve silence, while his eyes assumed 
a fishy glare and his cheek was blanched. 

I am watching them,’’ wrote Lady Mildred ; “ he may amuse 
Violet, but I am certain he will not touch her heart. To begin 


230 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


with, he is not exactly — well, there are gentlemen of many kinds, 
I suppose, and he knows how to conduct himself ; but he is not 
exactly a gentleman after our kind ; I do not hear anything about 
his people, but I suppose they are not distinguished, or we should 
have heard about them. He does not ride, or shoot, or hunt ; 
he does not know anybody, and I do not know where he comes 
from. He does not strike one as having lived with clever peo- 
ple, or well-bred people, or rich people ; and I dare say he is 
quite poor. If he is going to succeed in his work, it may help 
him a little to know people like ourselves. Perhaps, as you say, 
Bertha, he is in hopes of marrying an heiress. Let us give him 
every chance then.” 

His best chance was when Violet went sketching, and he could 
carry her things and talk to her while she sat at work. He had 
learned from certain journals a patois criticism — every kind of 
patois is necessarily a debased form of the real language — and 
this he talked, borrowing the ideas, which are misty, of this 
school, as well as its tongue, and pretending that they were his 
own. It seems a great pity that Nature, when she created this 
man so ardently desirous of distinction, gave him no ideas of 
his own. What is genius without ideas ? 

From talk of art to talk of love is a natural step. Love- 
making, indeed, may be made, in capable hands, a most artistic 
chapter of life, and one to be remembered ever afterwards with 
feelings of the liveliest satisfaction. It is most mortifying to 
think that most of us throw away and waste the most splendid 
chances while they are in our hands, hurrying the situation, 
scamping the dialogue, and simply ruining the “ business.” 
Some men, for instance, have actually been known to propose 
by letter ; while even of poets, who ought to know better, and 
dramatists, and novelists, not to speak of painters, all of whom 
should be perpetually studying situation and getting the most 
business possible out of every tableau, there are few who have 
extraeted from their own love passages anything like the amount 
of emotion, incident, and pathos which they should have yielded. 

In this case Jack Conyers made no headway at all. It seemed 
as if the girl, in the most innocent way possible, purposely di- 
verted every advance into another direction. All roads in con- 
versation may lead up to love, but there are cross lanes at every 
other step into which one may turn, Violet willingly walked 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


231 


with him and talked with him, but she showed no sign of taking 
the least interest in him. 

By this time he had completely satisfied himself that Lady 
Mildred would never have allowed her own daughter to live 
alone or among quite poor people in such a place as Hoxton. 
None of the ladies of his own family would have considered 
such an arrangement possible — there were ladies in his own 
family, though he never spoke of them, and did not invite them 
to his chambers in Piccadilly. Of course they knew, although 
they certainly did not belong to quite the very best circles, what 
was proper and what was improper. The great middle class 
especially knows what is proper. It did not occur to Mr. Con- 
yers as even possible that any young lady, much less a young 
lady who was the daughter of a baronet and the granddaughter 
of an earl, could dare to disregard those laws of propriety which 
are held as sacred as the decalogue by the whole of bourgeoisie. 

He was so certain that he was going to risk his fate. He 
would make a determined effort. Somehow, although every 
morning he resolved upon proposing that very day, he never 
succeeded. He was constantly alone with the girl. Lady Mil- 
dred allowed her to go about as she pleased. He was in her 
boat, well off the coast with her ; no one else but the old boat- 
man within hearing ; he was standing beside her while she sat 
and painted all the summer morning through ; he was strolling 
with her over the cliffs to Lee, or inland, where the sea mists 
sweep up the narrow coombe ^ he sat with her on the Capstone 
Rock, while the waves rolled up against that great headland, and 
outside the harbor the pleasure-boats rolled and rocked and gave 
the people inside such exquisite pleasure that they all held their 
heads over the side and begged and prayed to be taken ashore 
instantly. And all the time he talked, and all the time he felt, 
with a sinking heart, that he was making no impression. 

He made a last effort on the day before he came away. 

“ I must go back to town,” he said, with a sigh. “ This has 
been a very pleasant holiday. I shall remember it all my life. 
But work calls.” 

“ I thought yours was a kind of work which could wait till 
you chose to do it, Mr. Conyers. You have no work that you 
must do, have you ?” 

<^Mine is art work,” he replied, reproachfully, because she 


232 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


ouglit to have understood. “ Of course, therefore, I wait until 
it calls me.” 

“ Oh ! you wait for inspiration ; and now it has come. That 
is why, all the time you have been down here, you have done 
nothing. I am only a feeble creature, but I must be always 
drawing. Well, and have you got your inspiration at last ? And 
is it overwhelming ?” 

It seemed as if she were actually laughing at him. 

“ If I thought that anything concerning myself could interest 
you — ” 

“ It does, Mr. Conyers. I am interested about all my friends. 
You are one of my friends, are you not? Besides, I am rather 
curious about you.” 

Are you really curious about me ?” 

“Yes. I want to know what you really can do. You see, 
Mr. Conyers, we have had a great many talks about art, both 
in Florence and here ; but I have never seen any of your work. 
Surely you have done something by this time. Claude tells me 
you used to draw very well at Cambridge.” 

“ I will show you some day. You understand that a man may 
not desire to let his immature work be seen. I will tell you, in 
my own studio, if you let me, something of my aims, per- 
haps.” 

“ As you please. But are they mysterious ? If you are an 
artist, of course you propose to be a great artist. Claude is a 
lawyer, and desires to be a great lawyer.” 

“ My ambitions shall not be mysterious — to you.” 

“ Do not confide secrets to me, Mr. Conyers. I am the worst 
person in the world to keep them.” 

“ If you are curious — that is, interested — in any one, you like 
to know everything about him, do you not ?” 

“ You mean about his family connections ?” 

She was thinking of her own ; but the question reminded him 
how awkward it might be if he should have to explain certain 
things, and how difficult it might be to put them so that they 
should look really picturesque — almost everything may be made 
to look picturesque with proper handling, though the paternal 
profession and the “ girls” would require delicate handling when 
it came to explaining and introducing. 

“ Fortunately, my own family connections are well known,” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


233 


said Violet, lightly. “ Claude and I come of an old family ; on 
both sides, I believe, a family older than the Conquest.” 

“ But you do not know — it is not certain — ” 

“ Well then, Mr. Conyers, we will leave it uncertain until Oc- 
tober, and then, if you please, you shall show us some of your 
work and explain some of your aims ; though, if I were you, I 
should think less of the aims and more of the work.” 

The most stupid man in the world could not fail to perceive 
that the subject must be deferred till after the coming of age. 
But he did something to show the disinterested nature of his 
passion — ^he went to Lady Mildred and begged for a few words 
with her. 

** It is, briefly, Lady Mildred,” he said, “ that I have ventured 
to fall in love with one of your daughters.” 

“You mean Violet?” she asked, coldly. 

“ I have not presumed to speak to her. I do not know wheth- 
er she regards me with any favor at all. But I have seen her 
every day here — thanks to your kindness.” 

“ And you think you are in love with her ?” 

“ I ask only one thing, permission to take my chance ; your 
permission to speak when you return to town. I have, I con- 
fess, but a slender fortune, though I have large ambitions. My 
future,” he added, proudly, “ is, I believe, in my own hands. It 
may be a distinguished future.” 

“Every woman desires a distinguished husband,” said Lady 
Mildred. “But it would be a dreadful disappointment were 
promises not fulfilled, would it not ? If you place any reliance 
on your genius, Mr. Conyers, it would be well to have some first- 
fruits ready. But, indeed, it is not genius that I desire for Vio- 
let so much as certain other qualities. You know the history 
of the two girls ?” 

“ One is the sister of my dear friend, Claude Monument. The 
other is your own daughter.” 

“ One is an heiress and the other has nothing.” 

“Believe me. Lady Mildred, I should be happy indeed with 
Violet even in the latter case.” 

“That is well said” — it was fairly well said, but there 
wanted what we call the true ring. “ That is well said ; and 
now, Mr. Conyers, as you might be tempted to tell Violet all 
this at once, I beg you will go away, and if you are in the same 


234 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


mind in October, when we return, you have my full permission 
to speak to her.” 

He went away, hardly satisfied ; he returned to London. Town 
was quite empty, but Alicia was at home ; there was always din- 
ner for him — a good dinner — such as Alicia loved, with the 
beautiful claret, which she also loved, served in the great silver 
claret jug : dinner laid on the massive mahogany table, in the 
room with the huge sideboard and the pictures of game and 
fruit, all betokening a solid income and the substantial results 
of successful trading, with Alicia herself to talk about the old 
times before he set up for a fine gentleman and a great artist 
and a man of culture and sweetness, and was only a conceited 
handsome boy, who liked drawing girls’ heads, and looked a 
good deal at his own face in the glass, and gave himself airs, 
and talked about himself to the girl five or six years older, who 
lived in the adjacent villa at Stockwell, and belonged to folk 
of like standing with himself. He liked this talking over the 
old times with her. She was a person of no imagination; she 
always laughed at his pretensions ; she told him the whole truth ; 
and she never swerved from the doctrine that there is but one 
thing in the world worth striving for, and that is the thing for 
which all good business people diligently strive — a solid in- 
come — all the rest being pure illusion. 

For other distractions there was the girl at Hoxton, Some- 
thing had come over this girl ; a change in her manner and her 
talk ; she had grown shy with him ; the careless common talk 
of the streets, which formerly flowed freely from her lips, in a 
great measure disappeared — “ it is the influence of my conver- 
sation,’ he said. She was now dressed better ; she had a newly 
trimmed hat, and a new frock, and new boots ; and quite sud- 
denly she began to fill out in figure and to improve; her face 
was no longer promising, it was really pretty ; she had more 
than a pair of large and expressive eyes, and she carried herself 
uprightly. All this was the result of Valentine’s dinners, Val- 
entine’s example, and Valentine’s gifts. The girl was quick to 
learn ; she was shy with this lover of hers because she under- 
stood that the situation was serious, and she was afraid of what 
was before her. Melenda declared that Valentine would soon 
go away and forget them. She also — her name should have 
been Cassandra — foretold the approaching death of Lotty. Then 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


235 


the old life would begin again ; but it would be worse — far 
worse — because she bad now learned and knew what the easier 
life was like. Of course she ought not to have gone on meet- 
ing him ; Valentine would be very angry if she knew ; and yet 
the future that awaited her — and then — when it began — if this 
man should still want her to go away and become his model, 
what should she say ? 

“ Mr. Conyers is gone, Violet dear,” said Lady Mildred ; “ are 
you sorry ?” 

“Rather. He amused us, did he not? I like talking to a 
downright affected man. Besides, I was pleased to watch his 
love for Beatrice. There is nobody he would so much like to 
marry as that young lady. He thinks he can deceive- me into 
believing that he is in love with me.” 

“Violet!” 

“ But he is a wretched actor. One sees through him every 
moment.” 

“ My dear child 1” 

“ I wonder if he can really do anything ? Claude says he 
used to draw. I dare say he has some talent. But when a man 
calls himself an artist, and for three whole weeks never touches 
a pencil, and goes out with one and looks on without offering to 
draw or paint anything at all — my dear mamma, I fear that Mr. 
Conyers is a humbug.” 

“ He has asked permission to address you, Violet ; I have given 
him that permission, but I have put it off until we return.” 

“Thank you, dear. I wonder where he comes from. He 
seems to know nobody. Well — I wonder what Valentine is do- 
ing now — poor Valentine ! with Melenda 1 Mamma, I am quite, 
quite sure, that Beatrice — Mr. Conyers made a mistake when he 
gave you my name — will refuse that man.” 


CHAPTER XHI. 

A USELESS CRIME. 

Life is entirely made up of coincidences, though in novels, 
which should be pictures of real life, as much is generally made 


236 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


out of a coincidence as if the thing were unusual. That is be- 
cause, although it is common, it is dramatic. One need not be 
surprised, therefore, to hear that Valentine heard more about 
the man James Carey, and that from quite an unexpected quarter. 

It was from none other than the old letter-writer, Mr. Lane. 

Valentine met him one evening soon after she had received 
that confession at the almshouse. He was creeping along the 
pavement on his way home, his shoulders were stooping, his 
head more bowed, his coat more ragged than when first she 
made his acquaintance. She stopped him and offered him her 
hand. He did not take it, but he made as if he would take off 
his hat. This habit, as has been already remarked, is an inde- 
structible proof of good-breeding. Another sign is the hand- 
ling of the knife and fork. A third is the pronunciation of the 
English language. Mr. Lane did not carry out his intention of 
taking off his hat, because he remembered in time that the brim 
was like the maiden in the ditty, because at a touch it would 
yield. Yet the gesture moved Valentine with pity because it 
reminded her that the man had once been a gentleman. And how, 
by what cruelty or misconduct, had he fallen from the ranks ? 

‘‘May I walk with you?” she asked. “We are going the 
same way.” 

They were in the Curtain Road, and it was on Saturday even- 
ing, when the furniture warehouses are all closed, and the Ger- 
man journeymen, if wicked report be true, are all locked up in 
their attics without coats, hats, or boots, so that they cannot get 
abroad until the Monday morning, and then they must go to 
work again, and cannot expect or ask to get out of doors until 
Saturday night. 

The loneliness of Curtain Road on Saturday evening is as the 
desolation of Tadmor in the Desert, but the smell of varnish 
serves to connect the place with the handiwork of man. 

“ Surely,” replied Mr. Lane, “surely. It is long since a young 
lady walked with me — very long. It is five-and-thirty years.” 

She perceived that he walked feebly and that his knees trembled. 

“ I am going to take a cup of coffee, Mr. Lane. Will you 
take one with me ?” 

“ You wish to give me a cup of coffee.” He laughed a light, 
musical, but not a mirthful laugh. “ It is kind of you. I will 
accept it with pleasure.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


237 


He had been down on his luck all day, as he presently told 
her in the coffee-house. Here she gave him a chop with his 
coffee, and thus afforded him an opportunity of displaying the 
little mannerisms with a knife and fork which characterize Eng- 
lish gentlemen all the world over. His luck had been very bad, 
it appeared, for many weeks, so that when the rent was paid 
there was not always enough to satisfy the wants of the ma- 
chine. This evening especially he was much run down, and the 
unexpected chop brought a sense of physical comfort which he 
had not known for a great while. 

“ I thank you again,” he said, when he had finished. “ I am sunk 
low indeed, for I am not humiliated by the gift of a supper.” 

“Do not speak of humiliation,” she replied; “are we not 
friends and neighbors ?” 

“ Neighbors certainly. By divine goodness. Friends? — hard- 
ly. Men like me have neighbors — the lower we sink the more 
neighbors we have. But friends? — no, we have no friends. 
Friendship begins much higher up. First comes the man who 
struggles and starves side by side with another in the mud ; 
there is no end of his labor, neither is his eye satisfied with 
riches — for he gets none ; he and his fellows touch each other 
as they search for food, like midges fiying in a cloud beside the 
river; but these men are not friends. Then there are work- 
fellows on board the same ship and in the same workshop. They 
are companions, but not friends. And there are the men who 
are engaged in the same tricks. They call themselves pals, but 
they are not friends. Friendship, young lady, can only be formed 
at a certain stage of civilization.” 

“ Oh ! But there are such friendships as those of Lotty and 
Melenda and your daughter Lizzie.” 

“ The girls club together and fight against starvation. Call 
them friends if you please. But — ” he paused and considered. 
“ There are some old lines in my head — 

‘ Love seeketh not itself to please. 

Nor for itself hath any care.’ 

Who can seek for anything but for himself when he is hungry ? 
Starving people have no room for friendship or for natural af- 
fection. My daughter eats her bread and drinks her tea in one 
room — I eat my bread in another. She goes her way, and I do 

Q 


238 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


not ask — I have no right to ask — what way it is. Friends — we 
have no friends.” 

“ The lines are Blake’s,” said Valentine, somewhat astonished. 

“ Possibly. I have forgotten. Shall we go home ?” 

When they reached Ivy Lane, Valentine went with him, un- 
asked, into his room. 

“ Will you tell me something about your dream ?” she asked. 

“About my dream? Oh, yes. About my dream. It is a 
dream which goes on continually. It has gone on for five-and- 
thirty years. My dream? It is my life. The rest is a vain 
show and shadow — a procession of days and hours which are 
possessed of mocking devils, except when you come to me. And 
even you are part of the show and seeming. That is not my 
life. No one would live such a life as that. You are a dream, 
and Ivy Lane is a dream, and Lizzie is a dream, and all the hun- 
ger and poverty and misery are part of a dream. But what you 
call my dream is my reality — my life. Stay — you do not know 
the beginning.” 

“ I shall guess the beginning, perhaps, if you tell me where 
you are at present.” 

“ They have offered the man in my dream a bishopric. It is 
unusual so soon after a deanery has been refused. He is to be 
the new Bishop of Winchester. It was always his ambition to 
be bishop of the diocese in which he was born, and where there 
is Portsmouth with the ships and sailors. His father, you know, 
was a sailor — middy at Copenhagen and lieutenant at Trafal- 
gar — so that he always loved sailors. One can understand how 
great an honor this invitation seems to him.” 

“ Will he accept it ?” 

“ Surely — surely. It is a mark of the divine blessing on his 
life and labors. Besides, he who desireth the office of a bishop 
desireth a good work. This man has always looked forward to 
it as to the crown of his career ; yet humbly, because it brings 
heavy responsibilities. The consecration will take place imme- 
diately. Meantime he meditates upon his duties. To-night he 
will meditate more deeply and with more spiritual advantage 
because I have eaten well. So closely united are soul and body.” 

“The beginning, as I read it,” said Valentine, “is that five- 
and-thirty years ago you were a clergyman ?” 

There was, indeed, something in the appearance and carriage 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


239 


of the man, in spite of his rags, which suggested the clerical 
calling. Impossible to say exactly what was the peculiarity, 
but it existed. 

“ I was once a clergyman,” he answered, simply. I dream 
of my own life — as it might have been.” 

“ Please go on.” 

“ My eldest son — I was married thirty-five years ago — has just 
obtained a university scholarship ; my second is doing well at 
Winchester — my old school ; my daughters are sitting with me 
in my study ; and my wife — but she is dead.” A change came 
over the man’s face. Was his wife, then, not altogether a dream ? 

Valentine waited to hear more. 

Five-and-thirty years ago,” he said, “ I was thirty and I was 
married — not long married — when the dreadful thing happened 
to me. Good God ! Why was it suffered to happen ?” 

Do not talk about it. Forget it if you can and go on with 
your dream.” 

“ I must talk about it. There come times when I am con- 
strained to tell some one, even if it kills me to tell it. Last 
time I told it to the doctor. He came here yesterday to see 
me, but he only talked about you.” Valentine blushed. “He 
is in love with you. Of course he is in love with you. Every- 
body must be, you know that. It was not last night that I told 
him, but long ago — months ago — the last time that I was forced 
to tell it.” His face was agitated and his fingers twisted ner- 
vously. “ I must tell you.” 

“ But it agitates and pains yon. Do not tell me. Talk about 
your dream.” 

“ No, no — sometimes I understand that my dream is only a 
dream, and the real life is here, among these rags ; and then I 
must tell some one, even if it kills me.” 

“ He came to the village and lodged there three months, at 
the village inn. We all got to know him. The vicar at the 
vicarage — that was myself — and Sir William at the house. He 
went about among us all, smooth-spoken and well-behaved ; not 
a gentleman exactly, but a man who could sit with gentlemen. 
He came to church every Sunday ; he played the violin beauti- 
fully, and I played the violoncello, and my wife the piano — it 
is not often that a good player comes to a village — and we 
had trios. I was married — yes, I had been married for six 


240 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


months. I should have been married before hut for some col- 
lege debts. I don’t think there was anybody in the world hap- 
pier than I was all that summer.” 

“ Hush ! Do not excite yourself ; tell the story quietly.” 

“Tell the story — tell my story quietly? Oh! you don’t 
know.” His cheeks were white, his face was working, and his 
body writhing with the excitement of his story. 

“ But you are right. The doctor said I must keep quiet if I 
could. I will try. It was in the same summer that the great 
burglary took place at the house, and her ladyship’s jewels were 
stolen. I have sometimes thought that, perhaps, James Carey 
did that too 1” 

“ Who ? What was the name ?” 

“ James Carey was his name. James Carey.” 

“ James Carey !” Somehow she was not surprised. There 
could not have been two of that name — villains both. Yet it 
was strange to hear about him so soon again, and in this very 
house under the same roof with his daughter ! What new vil- 
lainy was she about to hear ? 

“ When you have heard the story you will get up and go awav.” 

“ No, no — I shall not.” 

“ It is a story of a great villain and a wretched sinner. There 
was a certain old debt, undischarged, which troubled me.” He 
told his story in jerks, stalking across the room, and throwing 
about his arms. “ The man threatened. I could pay him in 
three months, but he refused to wait. I was in dreadful trouble 
about it. The man Carey wormed himself into my confidence, 
and I told him. I was trustee, with another man, for a child. 
She had some money invested in our names. Carey showed 
me what to do. I ought not to have listened. I might have 
gone to that other man, my co-trustee ; he would have lent 
me the money ; but I was ashamed. Carey told me how to do 
it. Well, I was tempted and I fell — a preacher of God’s judg- 
ments — and I fell. I drew a check — it was for a hundred and 
twenty pounds. I signed it with ray name ; Carey signed my 
fellow-trustee’s name — out of friendliness, he said. In this way, 
you see, I became a forger — yes, a wretched criminal — a forger. 
Why don’t you get up and go away ? I was to draw the money 
and pay it back in six months’ time ; no one would ever know 
anything about it. He was the actual forger, but I was his ac« 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


241 


complice — ^his equal in guilt. Oli ! I have never complained of 
what followed. I deserve everything, and more. I do not com- 
plain, except sometimes, that men are made so weak. Nothing 
that has been done to me is equal to what I did to myself. I 
was such a fool, too — oh, I remember. When we had signed 
the check, Carey went to the bank to draw the money for me. 
Well,” — he stopped and laughed — “ what do you think? He 
never came back — he never came back with the money.” 

Do you mean that he kept the money ?” 

“ That is what he did. But I was a forger. Why, it was found 
out at once — I don’t know how. My writing was well known ; 
experts swore that the forgery was by me, too. My desk was 
found full of imitations. Carey had put them there. They 
found out about the creditor and his threats. There was no de- 
fence possible except that another man had drawn the money. I 
do not complain ; but sometimes I think he was a greater villain 
than myself. I was only a poor, contemptible wretch, born for 
such a lot as this.” 

“ The man Carey,” said Valentine, “ is dead.” 

“ Is he dead ? Is he dead ?” — he spoke as if he were disap- 
pointed — “I cannot think that he is dead. Because for five- 
and-thirty years I have always thought to meet him face to face. 
Dead ! And my own course is nearly run ! Great heavens I 
What a course !” 

He gasped and laid his hand upon his heart. But the spasm 
passed. 

“ I have suffered penal servitude. I have been cut off from 
my fellows. All this I deserved. I have been disgraced and 
exiled and starved. I do not complain. But surely the other 
man should have had something !” 

“ He died in prison. He received a harder punishment than 
you.” 

“ He — died — in — prison.” There was consolation in the fact. 
‘‘ I thought that I should die before him, so as to be ready with my 
testimony against him when he should come before the Judge.” 

“ Forgive him,” said Valentine. “ Forgive the dead, who can 
sin no more.” 

“ ‘ Their love and their hatred is now finished ; neither have 
they a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.’ 
Thus saith the Book.” 

11 


242 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Then forgive him.” 

“ No ; I cannot forgive him until the day shall come when I 
can forgive myself. And that will be — never. Oh ! men talk of 
forgiveness ; but how can they ever forgive themselves ?” 

“ Then do not speak of the man again. Tell me of your life 
since then. You found love. You have your daughter.” 

“ Love ! Do you think in such depths as mine there is room 
for love? I found a miserable girl in the streets, a girl as 
wretched as my daughter is now ; as poor, as starved, as hardly 
worked, more cruelly robbed.* I married her. AVhy ? I sup- 
pose to save her from a little of the pain. Oh ! I did not ask 
if the other wife was dead ; all that belonged to the past life, 
which was gone. I married her ; and perhaps she was less mis- 
erable for a while — I think she was — and then she died. 1 found 
money enough to pay some other poor wretches for the keep of 
the child. You know her — what she is. I have been able to 
do no more for her.” 

“Poor man ! Poor child !” Valentine took his hand — the 
long, nervous hand, thin and bony as a skeleton’s. 

“ She is the child of the gutter, which has been her play- 
ground as well as her cradle, and will be her grave. What can 
you expect ? Has she any of a woman’s virtues ? I do not know. 
They are not granted in the gutter. Let her live her life out 
with the other gutter children, and then lie down and die. Per- 
haps, after she is dead, she will find out why any of us were born, 
and what it means.” 

“ Poor Lizzie !” 

“ Sometimes when the thing comes back to my memory — the 
prison cell — the coming out again, which was worse ; the mis- 
erable life that I have led in this hiding-place — I feel as if I 
must ask why? But the heavens are silent. One cannot be 
heard up there, because of the crowd who are all crying out to- 
gether and asking why? — poor wretches I You know, when 
Abraham communed with the Lord, it was in the desert alone 
under the clear sky. It is no use crying out among so many. 
Else I could lift up my voice and ask why I was born so weak 
and others so strong.” Here his face became suddenly con- 
torted and his eyes glared and his body bent double and his 
hands clinched, and he swayed from side to side as one who is 
wrestling with an unseen adversary. Valentine sprang to her 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


243 


feet, but sbe could do nothing. You cannot help a man in mor- 
tal agony. 

The attack was over in a few moments. Presently he lay 
back upon the bed pale and exhausted. 

“ It was the Devil,” he whispered. “ He always clutches at 
my heart when I think about James Carey. I thought he would 
have killed me that time.” 

“ Do not talk. Lie quite still and quiet. Shall I bring the 
doctor to you ?” 

“ No, no ; it is over now. Give me that bottle. The doctor 
can do nothing.” 

She sat by the bedside and administered such words of con- 
solation as came into her mind. 

Then he sat up on the bed and began to tell her more about 
his life, and how, after a long period of misery and starvation, 
he found out the precarious way of earning his bread which he 
had practised ever since, and how the old life had vanished so 
completely that from the day when he was first put into prison 
he had never read a single book, nor looked in a single paper ; and 
how, in the worst time of his trouble, his dream came to him and 
became a ministering angel ; and he had found solace ever since 
in following an imaginary career of honor and distinction. 

A thick, black line indeed had been drawn across his life. 

“ What consolations,” he asked, “ can console for such a life 
as mine ? There is the thought that sooner or later there will 
be an end of everything. ‘ Surely,’ said the Preacher — ‘ surely 
oppression maketh a man mad, and better is the end of a thing 
than the beginning thereof.’ ” 

As for the other form of consolation, which sometimes does 
console, the poor man had lost the power of feeling it. 

“ You must never again,” said Valentine, “ even think of this 
man. As he is dead, you may the more readily forget him. 
And if you do not think of him too much, you may perhaps 
forgive him.” 

a Forgive him !” 

“ As you hope for forgiveness yourself.” 

“ I do not hope for anything.” 

“ But he is dead.” 

“ I do not know yet whether I shall meet him after death. Do 
not speak of forgiveness.” 


244 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


He fell asleep presently. It was long past midnight when 
Valentine went up-stairs to her own room. Lotty was lying 
asleep ; her pains had left her for the moment ; she was grow- 
ing daily weaker ; the moonlight was pouring into the room ; 
from the neighboring court there came the screams of an angry 
woman and the oaths of an angry man. Then these subsided 
and all was quiet. At one o’clock Valentine heard a step on the 
stair. It was Lizzie, the child of the gutter, come home from 
wandering about the streets. Valentine thought of her father’s 
words. Should she be suffered to lie forever in the gutter? 
Had she any womanly virtues? Well, the girl had one virtue: 
she loved her friends. 

Lizzie passed into her room and closed the door. 

Then Valentine leaned out of the open window and thought of 
the great human questions — why we are born — why we suffer — 
why we perish — and looked into the silent heavens above. In 
the clear sky rode the queen of night in splendor ; some of the 
stars were visible ; she seemed to hear millions of voices around 
her crying aloud in the night, all asking these questions, some 
with shrieks, and some with sighs, and some with wonder. And 
she longed for the peace of the desert when on such a night, as 
that poor old man had reminded her, the patriarch could step 
forth and commune with the Lord beneath the stars. Alas ! the 
crowds of the great city would stifle such a commune at the 
very outset. Yet there are some — Valentine remembered — who 
find consolation in the faith that the heavens are not deaf as 
w^ell as dumb. Else Ave had better all be dead, and let the great 
round Avorld roll on forever by itself without the mockery of 
man. And some day, we must also believe, all questions shall be 
answered, and on that day at length men shall learn even how to 
forgive themselves, and shame and remorse shall be no more. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

ASK ME NO MORE. 

Ivy Lane, including the part now called Ivy Street, and the 
courts leading out of it, is estimated to contain 1200 people, 
which gives, if you compute by the square mile, a most prepos- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


245 


terous rate of population. Most of the evils of life have taken 
up a permanent abode there, or are efficiently represented. Pov- 
erty, for instance, is always there, but that is too common to be 
regarded as an evil any more than a bald head or gray hair ; 
most people either suffer from it perennially, or get it from time 
to time. Destitution is always somewhere in the lane, with 
empty shelves and pinched faces ; disease is always somewhere ; 
drunkenness, as soon as the evening shades prevail, doth still 
take up its wondrous tale ; repentance, in the form of headache 
and heartache is never absent from Ivy Lane, because the people 
are always backsliding, and because, as the copybooks ought to 
enforce with greater emphasis, there is no overstepping which is 
not followed by its own headache ; or, as another Book hath it — 
“ The way of transgressors is hard injustice is always outside 
Ivy Lane, oppressing the helpless ; cheating and knavery, false- 
hood and treachery, craft and subtlety, everything is in Ivy Lane. 
Here is always the young man choosing between the broad and 
the narrow way ; between the easy way and the rough way ; gen- 
erally he chooses the broad way and so gets presently into difficul- 
ties. There is the young girl with such a choice as Lizzie’s al- 
ways before her. There are the old men and women who feel 
in a blind, confused kind of way that they must have made some 
great blunder at some time or other, else they would not now be 
so horribly poor. Love is always there, the love of- wife and 
sweetheart and mother; love in all its forms, strong to save. 
New life is always there : every minute, or thereabouts, a child 
is born. And death is always there : once a week, at least, the 
black box, generally a little one, is carried down the lane. 

This hive of swarming life, as soon as Valentine got over a few 
initial difficulties and grew accustomed to regard certain things 
without shrinking or terror, filled her with admiration mixed with 
humility. It shames us to witness the virtues of humble folk, 
because I suppose we are so perfectly certain that in our own case, 
supposing that we had ourselves to live in such a way, these vir- 
tues would be conspicuously absent. They are the humbler vir- 
tues, but useful and solid, such as patience, helpfulness, cheer- 
fulness, and sympathy with other lives of little joy. By degrees 
Valentine got to know all the people. She talked with them in 
the streets, and sat with them in their rooms, and became, with- 
out difficulty and without money-giving, their friend. In every 


246 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


room there was a history. Thus, in one lay an old soldier, a 
Crimean veteran, full of stories, kept from starvation by a pen- 
sion of ninepence a day, dying slowly of rheumatic gout, first 
engendered in the trenches before Sebastopol. There was the 
woman who washed, not as Mrs. Monument was wont to wash, 
with a lovely drying-ground outside, but in her own room, ham- 
pered withal by a daughter of seventeen not quite right in her 
head — “ half baked,” to use the popular and feeling expression. 
There was the decent man, laid up for the last four months with 
a bad knee, and all his savings gone. There was the painter, who 
had always been in good work until his hand “ dropped,” — a com- 
mon misfortune in the trade when one grows elderly. There 
was the man whom rheumatism had seized by the fingers and the 
wrists, swelling his joints into huge lumps and twisting them out 
of shape so that he could not work. There were everywhere the 
women : here one down with a bad confinement ; here one with 
a drunken husband who spent all the money in the Adelaide ; 
one whose husband was out of work ; one whose husband had de- 
serted her ; and one whose husband was dead, and her children 
crying for the food which she could not give them. Another, 
an elderly single woman, gaunt and thin, proud and ashamed, 
held out against Valentine for a long time, with something of 
the decayed gentlewoman in her speech and manners, and no 
doubt a history of her own if she chose to tell it, but she kept 
it to herself. As for her work — such a woman is not born for 
such work — she had to make trousers with the help of a ma- 
chine for a delightful German firm whose daughter, though only 
seventeen, was told off on account of her supernatural hardness, 
her shrewish temper, and her fluent tongue, to bargain with the 
women and beat them down to the uttermost and rail at them. 
But yet, by reason of the beneficial law of elevenpence-ha’penny, 
and despite the amiable young German, even this poor thing 
earned enough to keep the machine going. And everywhere a 
doleful and monotonous spectacle, the women and girls who toil 
all day with feverish energy for their miserable wage. Every- 
where the life that is not life ; the same slavery ; the same op- 
pression ; and the same patience. 

Of course these people are full of sin and steeped in wicked- 
ness ; everybody says so ; they are fond of drink and prejudiced 
against church, and avid of any little enjoyment which falls in 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


247 


their way ; they are stiff-necked ; ungrateful and never satisfied. 
Considering that whatever is done for them they are always left 
with the same long hours and the same short pay, it is not won- 
derful that they should he discontented. All of them moreover 
— a thing which must he considered — belong to the class which 
never get any share at all in the fruit and the wine, the cakes and 
the ale, however hard they work ; nay, the harder they work, the 
less they seem to get. And there are others, besides Sam the 
Socialist, who are loudly asking the ominous question if this 
is right, that any workers, even working-girls who cannot com- 
bine and never complain, and are perfectly helpless and cannot 
kick, rebel, or demonstrate, and are under no law but the law 
of elevenpence ha’penny, should always get less than their 
share. 

“You take it too much to heart, Valentine,” said Claude. 

They were sitting beside the pretty ornamental water in Vic- 
toria Park. It was half-past one o’clock, when the Victorians 
are all at dinner, and the park was like the garden of Eden, not 
only for its summer beauty, but because it contained only one 
single pair, a man and a woman. They had been talking over 
these things, and Valentine was betrayed into more emotion than 
was usual with her. 

“ I cannot take it too much to heart. It is impossible.” The 
tears crowded into her eyes, and her lips trembled. “ I hoped,” 
she added, gently, but her tears rather than her words reproached 
him, “ I hoped that you would have helped us, Claude. 

She was paler and thinner than when, six weeks before, she 
had begun her solitary life in Ivy Lane. Her face, always seri- 
ous, was now set with a deeper earnestness, and there was no 
smile upon her lips. You have observed the first delicate beauty 
of a girl who knows nothing about the world and its wickedness, 
whose reading, as well as her companions, has been under super- 
vision, who has been taught to believe in everybody’s goodness, 
who has only just begun to go into society, and who is as yet 
perfectly heart-whole. Well, that was now gone. 

In its place was the beauty of a girl who is young, still inno- 
cent, but no longer ignorant. Such knowledge as had come to 
Valentine does not destroy the early beauty, but it saddens the 
face and makes the eyes grave. She had learned hundreds of 
evil things ; henceforth, things which had been mere phrases, 


248 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


prayers whicli had been meaningless, would possess for her 
their real and dreadful meaning. 

There is nothing more saddening for a girl than the discovery 
that the world is not only very wicked, which the most carefully 
shielded girl must learn some time or other, but that its wicked- 
ness, in every form, is about her and around her, at her very 
feet, and that she is in a sense already responsible for some of 
it. This knowledge of evil came to Valentine suddenly, not bit 
by bit and gradually, as ladies sometimes learn it, but in an over- 
powering cataract which was almost more than she could bear. 
Perhaps it would have been better, it would certainly have been 
easier for her, had she been kept from the knowledge. The 
cultured life, surrounded by hedges which are filled with rose- 
bushes, hawthorn, eglantine,, honeysuckle, and wild flowers, on 
one side, but set with prickly pears and impenetrable thorns on 
the other, so as to exclude the rough and wicked world, is far 
more pleasant for a girl ; most of us would keep our girls in 
this paradise as long as we could ; we think that because their 
frames are weaker and their limbs more delicate than our own, 
we ought to keep them even from knowing the wild forces and 
the ungoverned passions without, as if it were the body and not 
the soul that is threatened by those waves which break and 
those winds which roar. Yet Lady Mildred knew beforehand 
something of what Valentine would experience. She did not 
act without deliberation : we are all, she thought, men and wom- 
en alike ; it cannot be altogether bad for us to know the truth 
about ourselves and our brothers. Some of us still remember 
the old story of how the knowledge of good and the knowledge 
of evil go together ; and there are hundreds of women who all 
day long wade breast-high in moral sloughs and slums, and 
emerge unspotted, save that some of the sunshine is taken out 
of their faces, some of the light from their eyes, some of the 
smiles from their lips. 

The tears in Valentine’s eyes went straight to Claude’s con- 
science like the stroke of a whip. The girl had not been his 
sister so long that he had ceased to regard her with a rever- 
ence which few brothers display towards their sisters. Be- 
sides, she was intrusted to his care ; and, again, he had been 
thinking. 

“ I have not forgotten my promise, Valentine,” he said, quick- 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


249 


ly ; “I remember all that you say to me. But it is a very seri- 
ous subject.” 

“ You have been really thinking of us, Claude ?” 

“I have been reading as well as thinking. But, Valentine, as 
yet I feel powerless even to suggest anything.” 

“ But you will never let it drop — never. Oh ! Claude, I see 
Melenda every day.” 

“There is no doubt,” he began, “that working-women are 
treated absolutely in accordance with the principle so dear to 
employers — supply and demand. If that is a true principle, 
then I suppose they ought to have nothing to complain of.” 

“ Nothing to complain of !” 

“ Supply and demand means that the women have got to take 
the best terms they can get ; in the struggle to live they under- 
sell each other till they reach the lowest terms on which life can 
be supported. That is the whole case, Valentine. The employer 
gives the lowest wages which will be taken. There is no ques- 
tion of justice, or of kindness, or of mercy. They call it a law 
of political economy, which must be obeyed.” 

“ Is it also a law of political economy that men who employ 
the women are to get rich ? Who makes such laws ? I suppose 
the manufacturers. Let us make our own laws for the women, 
and the first law of all, that whether the employer gets his profit 
or not, the girls shall be properly paid.” 

“ We should then promptly lose the services of the employer.” 

“ Then we would do without him.” 

“ Women cannot combine like men. They are unaccustomed 
to act together. There are too many of them. And they have 
no public spirit.” 

“ I have heard all this before, Claude. But first set up all 
your difficulties, and then you can cut your way through them.” 

“ They could perhaps combine,” Claude went on, “ if they had 
the support of the men. How to get that ? How to make the 
working-man feel that he must look after his sister ?” 

“ You will teach him that, Claude.” 

“You are persistent, Valentine. Every day your eyes look at 
me reproachfully — ” 

“ I do not mean to be reproachful.” 

“ And yet you are reproachful. And every day the burden 
you would lay upon me grows heavier to look upon.” 

11 * 


250 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Then take it up, Claude, and every day it will grow lighter.” 

“ One must move the girls to act together ; one must move 
the working-man to act for his sister ; and one must move the 
ladies, the gentlewomen, to act for the women who work. You 
demand impossibilities, Valentine.” 

“ Only a man can move the women. You must speak to them, 
Claude. You must speak right out — from your very heart.” 

“ It is strange,” he went on, pursuing his own thoughtf^ with- 
out answering her, “ it is strange. The oppression of the work- 
ing-woman is no new thing. It has not been discovered yester- 
day or the day before. It has been preached and described over 
and over again. Never a year passes hut some one writes in- 
dignantly about their treatment. It is fifty years since Hood’s 
‘ Song of the Shirt ’ was written, and forty since Mrs. Brown- 
ing’s ‘ Cry of the Children.’ Well, the children have long since 
been released, and yet the women remain in their misery.” 

“ That is because we care for the children,” said Valentine, 
“ but we do not care for each other.” 

“ There are no women anywhere,” Claude went on, “ so char- 
itable and so generous as Englishwomen ; they are never tired 
of doing good things, they sacrifice themselves, they go about 
among the poor, they are nurses.” 

“ But oh !” Valentine interrupted him, “ how many thousands 
are there like me, who have never done anything but look for 
new pleasures !” 

“ There is a great literature upon the subject ; the lines are 
written in blood, yet no man regardeth it. The story of the 
needlewoman of London is so terrible that one wonders why 
crusades have not been preached. As for that, a crusade has 
been preached, but nothing comes of it.” 

“It is because the preachers are women, and no one will 
listen to them. They want a man to preach, Claude. They want 
you.” 

“ They want a stronger man than me.” 

“ I can teach you what we women are like. I have studied 
myself on purpose. We are soft and luxurious ; we like things 
to be smooth and pleasant ; we never ask how things come ; we 
think the world was made only for us to enjoy ; we hate to hear 
painful stories; we put ugly things out of sight. You must 
force us to hear the whole truth: don’t talk about our kind 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


251 


hearts ; lash us with the truth about our hardness till we cry 
for shame and repentance.” 

She looked as if she herself could preach such a sermon on 
such a text. 

“You are too bitter, Valentine.” 

“We want a man,” she repeated, “ who must be young and 
generous ; he must be full of anger ; he must be able to speak, 
and fearless ; he must be a man who can speak to women of any 
class ; he should be a scholar ; he should know the working- 
women well ; he should be bound to them, Claude, by more than 
the ordinary ties. Oh ! where can such a man be found unless 
it is yourself ? Claude, it is your sister Melenda who calls you 
out of her misery and her helplessness. Listen ! Oh ! you must 
hear her voice among them all — it is so full of rage and of mad- 
ness. For what good were you taken from among them if — 
you — you of all men — spend your powers and your knowledge 
for your own ambition ? Oh ! Claude, if you could see the girls in 
their pain, too wretched even to pray ” — she stopped because her 
voice broke down. “ Claude, forgive me. I will never trouble you 
again. You have your own ambition ; you have chosen your own 
way ; and all I can do is to stay among them and help one or two.” 

She had conquered him before when she made him help her 
in the great renunciation by her music. She conquered him 
now by her tears. He took her hand and inclined his head over 
it, saying, “ Take me, Valentine ; do with me what you please. 
I am altogether at your service.” 

“ Claude !” she dashed away her tears and sprang to her feet. 
“You mean all that you say — exactly — all that you say?” 

“ All, Valentine. Why, my honor is concerned ; it is my sis- 
ter who calls me. Which of my sisters ? Is it Melenda, or is 
it Polly-which-is-Marla ?” 

She caught his hands and held them, with sparkling eyes. 

“ Only,” he said, “ do not expect too much. I told you at the 
beginning that you would be disappointed in me.” 

“ No, never disappointed ; always proud of our brother. And 
now, Claude, now — oh ! the women have never — never had such 
a chance before. You will feel for these poor girls as no one 
else but yourself could feel for them. It is like taking one of 
themselves out of the dreadful workrooms and giving her voice 
and speech and knowledge. Do you think that my mother — 


262 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


that Lady Mildred — meant this all along? Do you think she 
designed from the beginning that you were to give to the people 
the things she gave to you ? Why, it was like a woman — was it 
not ? — to give them through a man. But what did she intend 
for Polly ?” Certainly, she remembered in time, Polly showed, 
as yet, no signs of giving back anything to her own people. 
Valentine ceased, therefore, to pursue this speculation, which 
might have carried her further than she wished. “ Oh, happy 
girls !” she went on, “ they have found a leader at last. You 
will speak for them, Claude, and write for them, and think for 
them. Oh, to be a man and to have a great cause to fight for ! 
And you dared — oh ! you poor boy, only a month ago — you 
dared to hesitate between your ambition and this wonderful ca- 
reer that lies before you. Oh, it fills me with such joy ! I can- 
not tell you how happy it makes me,” yet she was crying. “ I 
have been wretched because of my own helplessness. But now 
you are with me all the difficulties will vanish.” 

“ As for me, I feel that the difiiculties are only just beginning. 
You will help me to face them.” 

“ Yes ; I will help you if I can. I did not understand at first, 
but now I do, that this is a work which will take all your soul 
and all your strength, Claude ; all your time — perhaps all your 
life. Will you give so much to your poor sisters, who will take 
it all and perhaps never thank you ? All your life, Claude ? All 
your life — and never to regret or to look back ?” 

“ It is all 1 have to give, Valentine. I am prepared to give so 
much. Even to give up ” — he blushed and laughed — “ even to 
give up the woolsack, and never become lord chancellor.” 

She did not comprehend — no woman could comprehend — the 
full extent of Claude’s sacrifice. Many young men are ardently 
desirous of distinction or even notoriety ; they will stoop to Tom- 
fool tricks if they cannot get a show by any other way. Claude, 
on the other hand, was possessed of the idea that he ought to 
justify his social promotion. It seems, if you think of it, an 
extremely foolish thing for a young man to be picked out and 
raised above his fellows if he does nothing afterwards to justify 
the selection. One such case have I known. The man had ev- 
erything in his favor ; that is to say, he was, to begin with, the 
son of a village blacksmith, which is an enormous advantage at 
the outset. You cannot get much nearer to the hard pan. Then 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


253 


he was a strong and lusty creature ; and he was much impressed, 
like Claude, with the necessity for work. He did work ; he 
worked day and night ; yet, most unhappily. He was awkward 
and stupid, and could never acquire either knowledge or man- 
ners. He experienced as much difficulty in passing his exami- 
nations as if he had been the son of a duke ; he entered a pro- 
fession where brains are welcomed but are not necessary ; and 
he has remained ever since in the lower branch of that profes- 
sion on the wages of a blacksmith’s assistant. 

Consider : Claude had his fellowship ; that is to say, a certain 
income for a few years longer ; he could afford to wait ; he had 
already some work, and could very fairly expect more ; he could 
speak ; he had studied law with the same intensity which he 
threw into all his work ; and he was calmly certain that he was 
going to do well. There is one excellent thing about a good de- 
gree, that it makes a young man believe in himself. He who 
has been well up in the first class never afterwards doubts his 
own capacity to become lord chancellor. Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, editor of theJVmes, poet laureate. President of the College 
of Physicians, prime - minister — anything except ambassador. 
That is the one distinction which shares with the Garter the 
pride of being kept absolutely out of anybody’s reach. These 
first-class men do not generally aspire after the fame of Thack- 
eray or Fielding, because, in academic groves, the craft of the 
novelist is held in contempt, and is not yet even recognized as 
one of the fine arts. They do not read Lucian, Apuleius, and 
Heliodorus. Claude, therefore, who had been very near to the 
top, regarded any of these positions as a young athlete may re- 
gard an Alpine peak. His foot may yet stand upon it. If now, 
at the very outset and beginning, he was to withdraw in order 
to work for Valentine, it would most likely be to destroy every- 
thing ; and for what ? 

“ What will you give me, Valentine, in exchange for the wool- 
sack ?” 

She was exaltee at the prospect which she saw before her, fair 
and glorious, because she was still very young, and because she 
believed greatly in this young man, who might have been, and 
thought he was, her brother. 

“ Oh !” she said, “ you want nothing. It is a nobler life that 
you have chosen. It is a far greater thing even to try, and 

R 


254 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


though you fail altogether ; hut you shall not fail, Claude ; you 
shall not fail. I said that your sisters will take all that you give, 
and never perhaps thank you. But I will take care that they 
shall. And in exchange you shall have the hearts of a hundred 
thousand women, whose lot you will change from wretchedness 
to plenty. Will not that be compensation enough for you?” 

When history comes to ask — as no doubt it will — how it hap- 
pened that so excellent a lord chancellor as Claude Monument 
was lost to the country, and why he never became Sir Claude 
Monument, and then Baron Monument, and then Earl of Hack- 
ney Marsh, I hope this chapter will be considered a suflScient re- 
ply. No one is to be blamed,'-except himself, and we must not 
blame him greatly, because he was like his forefather when the 
woman tempted him and he did eat. 


CHAPTER XV. 

BROTHER joe’s DISCOVERY. 

Claude’s conversion, or his awakening, or his act of crowning 
folly, whichever you please to call it, by which he absolutely 
abandoned and threw away as promising a career as ever offered 
itself to an ambitious young man, took place on the morning of 
Saturday, the twenty-ninth day of August. 

The date is as important as other historical dates. It marks 
the commencement of a new era, as will be presently seen, and 
it has, therefore, to be rejnembered like that of the Hegira or 
that of Martin Luther’s “ Theses.” It is also extremely impor- 
tant for another reason of a more private nature, and therefore, 
because all of us love the individual above the class, of more 
general interest. It is that on the very day after his conversion 
Claude learned a very important family secret. If he had known 
it on the Saturday morning his decision might possibly have been 
the same, but there would have been hesitations and difficulties. 

He found out this important fact in a very simple way, so 
simple that he wondered afterwards why he had not thought of 
that way before. But then he had never set himself to discover 
a secret which Lady Mildred evidently regarded as her own, nor 
had he ever thought of ways by which that secret could be dis- 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


255 


covered. That kind of smallmindedness is impossible for a man 
whose chief desire it is to justify his promotion. 

On the Sunday morning, being the day after the great surren- 
der, he called upon his mother. This was not in itself by any 
means an extraordinary event or one calling for observation. 
And his mother talked a great deal about her daughter, which 
was also not extraordinary, because during that summer the old 
lady thought and talked of little else, and occupied the whole 
time, during every one of Claude’s visits, in a running commen- 
tary on the virtues of her daughter Polly. Claude, she thought, 
should consider his sister more ; he should take her to tea some- 
times, say at the Spaniards, or Jack Straw’s Castle, or North 
End, or High Beech, or Chingford, or to some other country 
place of a Sunday ; she would be all the better for country air, 
and she was too proud to keep company with the first that of- 
fered ; as for thoughtfulness, and good-temper, and singing like 
a bird, and never being cross, and catching a person up, or get- 
ting into rages, as Melenda did, there was nobody in the world 
like Polly, and what she should do when Polly went back to her 
place in October she did not know. 

While they were still talking about her, it happened — again 
not an unusual thing on Sunday morning — that Joe came slowly 
down the road and looked in at the almshouse, and stood at the 
door, leaning and listening, pipe in mouth, slowly getting, in his 
own 'way, the utmost possible enjoyment out of a fine Sunday. 
He never said much at any time, chiefly because he was of an 
amiable disposition, and loved to oblige and gratify other peo- 
ple, and very well knew that people liked talking better than 
listening, and that everybody had a great deal to say on every 
subject. This morning he said nothing at all, but from time to 
time there passed over his face something broader than a smile, 
and something narrower than a grin. On Sundays he was new- 
ly shaven, so that the play of his lips had a chance, and his face, 
which during the week was always smudged, was now clean, so 
that his eyes had a chance. His lips, while his mother talked 
of Polly, smiled from time to time, and his eyes danced, if a 
man of Joe’s age can have dancing eyes. Claude observed 
these signs of amused intelligence, and wondered what they 
might mean. Presently, and soon after stroke of noon, Joe got 
up to go, and Claude accompanied him. They walked away to- 


256 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


gether, side by side, workman and gentleman, as it should be 
with all workmen and all gentlemen, as well as with those who 
are brothers. Outside the almshouses, Joe knocked the ashes 
from his pipe and laughed, not aloud, but with a chuckling, 
bubbling, secret enjoyment. 

“ What are you grinning at, Joe ?” asked Claude, “ and what 
made you keep smiling while my mother talked ?” 

“ She goes on about the gell, don’t she, boy ? Never tired o’ 
singin’ her praises — might make a man jealous, because there’s 
^my Rhoder been with her as many years as that one weeks.” 

“ She is very fond of her.” 

“ Well, I ain’t jealous. Not a bit, Claude. I like to hear her. 
It does me good to hear her go on like that, the poor old worn- 
an ! It makes her happy, don’t it ?” 

“ Why shouldn’t she go on, as you call it ?” 

“ She and her Polly ! Ho ! ho ! ho !” 

What do you mean, Joe ?” 

Joe stopped and looked at his brother in questioning guise. 

“ Why, you don’t mean to tell me that you haven’t found 
out?” 

“ Found out — what?” 

“ It don’t matter to you and me ; and if the old woman likes 
to think she’s Polly, and if it makes ’em both happy, what’s the 
odds to anybody ?” 

“ Well, but, Joe — what can you know about it ?” 

Joe laughed. 

“ As if I shouldn’t know my own sister di-reckly I set eyes 
upon her.” 

“ How should you know her when you haven’t seen her for 
twenty years ?” 

“ Brigadier, you’re a scholar, and you’ve read a mighty lot of 
books. I haven’t. But I’m blessed if I don’t think I am as 
sharp in most things as you.” 

“ Sharper, if you please, Joe. I am sure you are, in fact. But 
go on, please.” 

“ Why — can’t you guess, now ? Look here, lootenant, it’s 
this way. When father died — you’ve got no call to be ashamed 
of your father, mind — I was sixteen years old. Consequentially, 
I remember him, and his face too, very well, I do. You were 
only three or four. Consequentially you can’t remember him nor 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


257 


his face. And he hasn’t left his likeness behind. There’s never 
a photograph of him anywheres. Now do yon begin to see ?” 

Claude had not begun even yet to see. He had never some- 
how connected his father, who was the shadow of a name — but 
a blameless name — with these two girls. 

“ When I see the two young ladies, pretty and sweet-man- 
nered like the flowers in the garden, and when I heard them go- 
ing on in that pretty way of theirs about Valentine and Violet, 
and Miss Beatrice and Polly, and not knowing which was which, 
and the old woman clutching hold of the one that wasn’t Polly, 
and then the one that was, I could ha’ laughed right out. But 
I didn’t, Claude ; I just let things be, and sat as grave as a 
judge.” 

“AVell, Joe?” 

“Well? And didn’t you see me call Rhoder and range her 
up alongside the two young ladies ? What do you think I did 
that for ? Why, for you to see as well as me, of course. I said 
to myself, ‘ Claude’s got eyes in his head. It’s easy for him to 
see which of them two young ladies my gell favors.’ There she 
was — there was my Rhoder alongside the two who don’t know 
which is which. Why, to me the likeness was just wonderful. 
It was most enough for a blind man to see.” 

“ Yet I saw nothing.” 

“ That was because you didn’t think about anything but them 
two pretty creatures. Your head was full of ’em. As for my 
Rhoder, you hadn’t a thought for her. Now look here, Claude, 
Rhoder’s a very pretty gell — as pretty as most, and, what’s more 
to the point, she’s just exactly like your father must ha’ been 
when he was sixteen — as much as one sweet-pea is like another 
— though her grandfather couldn’t exactly be called a sweet-pea. 
Cast your eye on Rhoder and you’ll see your father over again. 
Then think of the two young ladies.” 

Claude changed color. He began to understand now. 

“ Get on a little faster, Joe — do get on. Tell me everything.” 

“ Father, you see ” — Joe did get on, but slowly — “ he’d got a 
delicate kind of face, with what the women call speaking eyes, 
and a soft sort of a smiling mouth — oh ! he was a good-looking 
chap ; if you were old enough to remember what he was like, you 
wouldn’t forget him in a hurry. Looked like a gentleman, he 
did. Well, now, here’s the long and short of it. Rhoder has 


258 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


got the same eyes and the same delicate sort of a face, and the 
young lady she calls Polly hasn’t.” 

“ Oh !” 

“ But the other one has. That very same identical face and 
eyes she’s got. Same as my Rhoder. That’s why I put her up 
alongside for you to see. And now do you understand ?” 

There was no longer any room for doubt on the point. The 
most stupid would, have understood. 

“ Is it possible ? Are you quite sure of what you say, Joe ?” 

“ Certain sure I am. Lord ! when I see that one coming back 
again, without her fallals, and pretending she was Polly come to 
look after her mother, I could ha’ laughed again. But I didn’t 
laugh, Claude, because mother took it mighty serious.” 

“ Joe, she does not know. Valentine really does not know.” 

“ That’s what I was in trouble about. I said, ‘ Either she’s act- 
ing or she isn’t. If she is acting, it’s the best acting I ever see, 
and it would be a shame to spoil the fun ; and if she isn’t, she’s 
a good girl, and it would be a shame to tell her when she thinks 
she’s doing her best by her mother and Melenda.’ ” 

“ This is no acting, Joe. Valentine does not know anything, 
and she must not be told.” 

“ Besides,” Joe continued, “it isn’t every young lady who 
would come and live as she’s living. Not but what she’s safe 
enough ; and Melenda, though she’s set her back up, wouldn’t 
let anybody insult her but herself. I found that out first thing, 
Claude.” 

“ Did you, Joe ?” Claude was much touched with this act of 
forethought. It really was a good thing for Joe to have done, 
if you come to think about it. 

“ Lady Mildred’s daughter must not be let come to no harm,” 
Joe replied. “ If it hadn’t been for her, where should we all be 
now ? So, Claude, I had a word or two with Melenda. And she 
knows what to do.” 

“ Don’t tell my mother, Joe. Let her find out when the time 
comes. Perhaps she may never find out.” 

“ I won’t tell, boy. Don’t be afraid of me, captain.” 

“ And I say, Joe, don’t be offended, you know, but I hope you 
haven’t told Rhoda or — or anybody at home.” 

“ Tell Rhoder ? Ho, ho ! Claude, do you think I was born 
yesterday ? You might as well tell the parish pump. I’ve told 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


259 


nobody except you. Me and you know — that’s enough. Polly is 
the other one — the one who looked out of the corners of her eyes 
at me — thought I was going to knock her down, p’r’aps, or say 
something rude, or go swearing at the ladies ; or to jump upon 
her, very likely ; wondered if a working-man was tame, and 
looked round the almshouses as if she was half ashamed and 
half curious and half amused. That one is your sister, Claude. 
That’s Polly-which-is-Marla.” 

Claude began to consider rapidly the situation and its possi- 
bilities. If Valentine knew this, or was to find it out, the whole 
reasons for her retreat from the world would be lost, and she 
might as well go back again. Then the brotherly relation with 
himself would be at an end ; he could no longer go on working 
with her in the same free and unrestrained manner. Why — he 
thought — what could be the reason for allowing Valentine to be 
under his care unless the maintenance of that brotherly senti- 
ment, so that there should be no room for any other when the 
discovery had to be made ? It was wise and thoughtful of Lady 
Mildred, who was always wise and thoughtful. They were al- 
ways to remain brother and sister. Very well, it was strange to 
feel that they never could be brother and sister. Meantime, in 
loyalty to his benefactor and friend, the situation must be ac- 
cepted now at the cost of some deception and dissembling. 

“ Is it possible ?” he said, a second time. 

“ As for this one,” Joe went on, “ that you call Valentine and 
mother calls Polly, she must be Miss Beatrice, I s’pose, and Lady 
Mildred’s daughter. But, bless you, she isn’t a bit proud. She 
sings about the place like a lark, and does up the tea-things, and 
dusts the room, and makes the old woman laugh, and fixes her 
easy and comfortable ; and then she comes up to our place and 
sits down friendly and talks to the missus ; and she’s as good as 
a mother to Rhoder — who’s afraid of her — and she buys things 
for the kids — boots and fruit and toys and things. She’s a top- 
per, Claude. That’s what she is, and don’t let’s make no error 
about that. But you trust me. I won’t telL As for letting 
anybody know — why — there — ” 

He filled his pipe again and began to feel for his box of 
matches. 

You remember my father well?” asked Claude. 

Joe’s face changed curiously, and again Claude wondered* 


260 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


For this time it changed from sunshine to cloud, and his eyes 
darkened. 

“ Yes,” he replied, shortly, “ I remember him very well.” 

“ It is curious,” said Claude, “ that I seem to know so little 
about him.” 

“Well, Claude, there isn’t much to know, perhaps. He’s 
dead. That’s about the sum of it. When a man’s dead there 
isn’t much to say about him generally, is there ? Once a man’s 
dead, you see — ^why — he’s dead, ain’t he ?” 

“ How was it he looked like a gentleman ?” 

“ Can’t say,” Joe replied, “ ’cause he never told me.” 

“ A locksmith doesn’t often look like a gentleman.” 

“ Well, I’m a plumber and a locksmith and a house decorator, 
and anything you please. And I suppose I don’t look very much 
like a gentleman, if you come to that. Unless it’s on Sunday 
morning, when I’ve got on my Sunday trousers and in clean 
shirt sleeves, and I’m a-carrying home the beer for dinner, and 
then I feel a gentleman down to the ground. But you always 
look like one, Claude. There’s no doubt about you. So did 
father, though not such an out-and-out toff as you, captain.” 

“ I should like to remember him.” 

“ Should you ?” Joe replied, with a strange light in his eyes. 
“ Well, Claude, you’ve got no call to be ashamed of your father 
— remember that — though he was but a locksmith. Honest he 
was, and truthful — specially truthful. That’s enough said about 
father. And don’t you never talk to your mother about him, 
because she don’t like it. Widows don’t mostly, I suppose, like 
talkin’ about their husbands. Seems natural, somehow.” 

As a general proposition this maxim may be disputed, but in 
his own mother’s case, Joe was right. Mrs. Monument did not 
like talking about her late husband. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE EARTHLY TRACT SOCIETY. 

In this informal way, merely by conversation on a bench in 
Victoria Park, was formed a partnership which has already accom- 
plished so considerable a work. It seems, now that we can look 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


261 


back from the vantage-ground of a few months’ history, a natu- 
ral result of Valentine’s great renunciation and Claude’s great 
surrender. And although this thing is spreading far and wide, 
it must not be forgotten that it was originally intended for the 
most obscure and the least-known quarter of London, a place 
quite hidden away and forgotten, concerning which nothing has 
ever been written, and for which nothing worthy of the chroni- 
cler has ever been attempted. Who could look for great things 
out of Hoxton ? In that respect it may compare with a certain 
little city of Galilee. 

The complete history of this partnership will doubtless be 
some day written in detail. It is nothing less than a chapter in 
political economy, and belongs to that important section of the 
science which shows how tendencies have been mistaken for 
laws : how selfishness, avarice, greed, knavery, cheatery, and in- 
justice have been considered the great and beneficent purpose 
of creation, and tricks of trade have been taken as forming part 
of the eternal reign of law. 

It is, in fact, the story how the supposed laws of humanity 
may be modified by simple acts of humanity. This, if they were 
indeed laws, is exactly as if the laws of gravitation could be sus- 
pended or reversed by a simple effort of the human will. And 
as the ideas of the partnership are spreading, and have already 
got outside Ivy Lane and have invaded Clinger Street, Hems- 
worth Road, Bacchus Walk, and James Street, and are now cross- 
ing the Kingsland Road into Ilaggerston, and have leaped across 
the canal into Islington and Dalston, and are stirring the slug- 
gish blood of Goswell Road, it is only just to Valentine that the 
truth about the beginning of the new gospel — after all only a 
natural outcome of the old — should be clearly stated. 

Great ideas grow quickly in the brains where they are first 
inspired, especially if they are assisted by a partnership of the 
only true kind — namely, a male and female partnership ; for the 
masculine mind at its best is as prolific of ideas as a sunflower 
is of seeds or an oak of acorns. It puts them forth freely and 
without stint, while the feminine mind receives such of them as 
it catches, and nurses them tenderly while they are yet young, 
watching them grow, placing them in the sunshine, keeping them 
from east winds until they are able to go alone and need her 
care no longer. There have been partnerships where the reverse 


262 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


process has been attempted, but purely feminine ideas have 
proved to be weakly, sickly things, and man is never a good 
nurse. It does not do to fly in the face of nature. Some day 
there will he some such partnerships as this in art, and especial- 
ly in the art of Action, whereby for the flrst time the true wom- 
an may be revealed to the admiring man, and the true man to 
the admiring woman. As yet it has been given unto us only 
partially to discern the working of the feminine mind, and to 
understand darkly that it works on lines wholly different from 
our own. There are so many great ideas — just as there are so 
many acorns — that by this time there should be nothing left in 
the way of human endeavor to discover or to do. Unfortunate- 
ly, just as there are so many acorns which never come to oaks, 
so there are so many great ideas which perish in the very incep- 
tion or first beginning of them. Some are gobbled up by the 
pigs — those, namely, which are too generous for contemporary 
mankind ; some fall on rocks — those, namely, which are in ad- 
vance of their generation ; some in ditches, where they are 
choked by weeds — those be they which are uttered in humble 
and lowly place ; some fall among the crowd, which is busy in 
buying and selling, and so heed them not, but trample them un- 
der foot ; and some fall into running streams and are carried out 
into rivers and so into the ocean and are lost — these are ideas 
which are proclaimed at the wrong time, as when, during a time 
of war, a man shall go about preaching peace. The loss of all 
these ideas is a dreadful hinderance to progress. Another is 
the inconceivable stupidity of that blind, deaf-and-dumb race 
known as the “ Other People.” What a world — what a wonder- 
ful and beautiful world — could we create in a year or two but 
for the Other People ! All the wars, all the injustices, all the 
blunders, and all the crimes are due to the Other People. But 
for them we should unite, combine, agree, concert, devise, and 
execute such things as the world has never yet seen. It is for 
this long-eared race that statesmen make pledges, promises, and 
assurances ; they have eyes which see not and ears which hear 
not ; they are idolaters, and worship one man, one formula, one 
idea; and for stiff-neckedness, for continual lusting after things 
which they ought not to desire, they are worse than the Israel- 
ites in their most palmy days, 

“ What next, Claude ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


263 


“ What next, indeed ! What first ?” 

“ To begin with, then, I know quantities of people in Ivy Lane. 
I can ask questions without giving offence. They are all friend' 
ly with me, and they don’t think that I am working for them.” 

suppose nobody likes being worked for,” said Claude. 
“ Suppose the working-man were to form a society for the ref- 
ormation of higher-class manners. It would be irritating to 
know that hundreds of men and women were going about in the 
West End trying to raise one — the low-level one — to a higher 
level. How would you like it,yalentine, if you knew that wor- 
thy people were wearing blue ribbons solely in order to make 
you temperate ? How should you like to be invited to tea and 
addresses for your moral good ?” 

I should be very angry.” 

“ So I dare say will your friends in Ivy Lane become if we let 
them suspect that we are working for them. Patience, Valentine, 
and let us get the facts.” 

“ It is in my favor,” she said, “ that I do not belong to any of 
the well-known organizations of parish religious societies — church 
or chapel. People do not suspect me of wanting them to do 
something or believe something, since I neither wear a monastic 
dress nor belong to the religious missions. I am not expected to 
rebuke nor to admonish, which makes a great difference.” 

She might also have explained that there were certain graces 
of manner peculiar to her which greatly assisted her and softened 
the hearts of the people and would not permit them to be brutal. 

There stands a little chapel in Ivy Lane, of which mention 
has already been made. It is quite a modest little structure, yet 
proud, and justly proud, of the purity with which the Christian 
doctrines have always been proclaimed here to the people by 
faithful ministers who have never felt the least need of worldly 
learning. It is complete though so small ; there is a gallery in 
it ; one window with a circular head at the back and two in 
front. There is also a harmonium, and there is a table on which 
a desk stands and does duty for a pulpit on Sundays. It holds 
at least forty people without counting the gallery. One of the 
first things the partners did was to engage this chapel for week- 
day services of a different kind. Here Valentine placed a piano, 
and invited all the ladies of Ivy Lane to come and to bring their 
babies, on certain evenings, when she gave them tea, and sang 


264 


CHILDREN OP GIDEON. 


to them ; and sometimes the doctor, who had a manly bass, sang 
too, or gave recitations ; and sometimes Claude read. The wom- 
en came first, because it was a new thing and pleasant ; then 
some of them got tired of the singing and the reading, and 
wanted the perfect freedom of their own tongues, and returned 
to the open court again. But some there were — there is always 
a leaven — who preferred the peace and the good behavior in this 
chapel to the noise outside. It was from these quiet women 
that Valentine gathered, bit by bit, the real life of the poor. 
You may talk to such people for hours together without hearing 
anything at all, and then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, and 
perhaps from the most stupid person in the world, you will get 
a single hint, a fact, a suggestion, which makes your heart leap 
up because it explains a thousand things, and shows the way 
clear and certain where it was formerly hidden by the bushes. 

Very well ; anybody can hire a hall and play and sing to peo- 
ple. The Kyrle Society are always doing it, with admirable re- 
sults. That is to say, the people are pleased, and go away, and 
are not in the smallest degree stimulated to learn singing and 
playing for themselves. If this is all the partnership and the 
great renunciation and the surrender has been able to effect, 
Valentine might as well have remained among her own friends 
and merely married an earl or a viscount, and Claude might as 
well have stayed where he was and merely become in course of 
time lord chancellor. But there are other things, though some 
of them belong to a later period, after her first three months of 
exile were finished, and she had gone home and returned again. 
Besides, it is in the nature of every healthy human thing to 
grow, and of every truly spiritual thing to grow without know- 
ing the decay which presently falls upon things of the fiesh. 
The purpose which began with nothing more than the study of 
three working-girls, widened until it covered the whole wide and 
terrible subject of women’s wrongs ; when Valentine called for 
the assistance of Claude it was in the hope of redressing some 
of those wrongs. But man’s intellect tends to roam and wom- 
an’s to concentrate ; and, as the former is the stronger, so pur- 
pose grows. 

“ Don’t you think, Claude,” said Valentine one day, “ don’t you 
think that a person even in these days may get a revelation— 
that is, a perfectly true idea ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


265 


Why not ? Every true thing is a revelation, I suppose. You 
have a new thing in your own mind ?” 

“ Is it new ? It is this — if everybody knew that all science 
can teach, there would be no suffering or disease, would there ?’' 

“ No, I suppose not, if science could learn new things as fast 
as they could teach them to the people.” 

And if they knew everything in morals there would be no 
wicked men, would there ?” 

“ The only original sin is ignorance. Your idea is not quite 
new, yet it is new enough for us. Go on, Valentine.” 

“ It is new to me.” 

“ Huxley has compared life to a game of chess with an invis- 
ible opponent who knows every move of the game, and cakes 
advantage of his knowledge. If you make a false move he 
crushes you without the least remorse.” 

“ I did not mean anything quite so grand as that. I meant 
something much simpler. Such as that people ought to be clean 
and to keep their houses clean ; they ought to take care of their 
own health ; they ought to be temperate and thrifty ; they ought 
lo get fresh air ; they ought to practice self-control — ” 

“ All this is perfectly true. But — ” 

“ Wait a little, Claude. I cannot put things quite like Pro- 
fessor Huxley. They have been told, I suppose, that they ought 
to do all these things. But then they have not been told why. 
Do you think if they knew the reasons for obeying that they 
would go on disobeying laws ?” 

“You have not said all that is in your mind, Valentine.” 

“ Not quite. If you told me not to go across a field but 
round its sides I might obey or I might not. If you proved to 
me that I must not cross the field because there was a great 
shaking quagmire in the middle which would swallow me up, I 
should certainly not cross the field.” 

“ I begin to perceive, my partner, that you have got hold of 
a practical idea.” 

“ It came of something you said the other day, Claude,” she 
said, blushing with the pleasure of having really thought of 
something. 

“ Of course. Adam once laid all the blame on Eve, and she 
has been giving him all the praise ever since.” 

“ Well, perhaps ; I do not know — things may be so con- 
12 


266 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


nected that it would be easier to move the men in the right di- 
rection if we first endeavored to make them more careful about 
their homes.’’ 

“You connect the women with the home, of course.” 

“ Do you really think my idea, though it may not be at all 
new, may be worth considering ? Should we begin by teaching 
people something? Oh 1 we are getting on so slowly.” 

“ Do not be despondent, Valentine. We shall get on slowly 
though we give all our lives to the task. We have got to ac- 
complish something well-nigh impossible. We have got to find 
out if anything can possibly be done to improve the condition 
of our friends. As for that quagmire illustration of yours, it is 
almost as good as the chess comparison. But who is to make 
the people understand it ?” 

“ You, Claude, of course.” 

Claude laughed. “ Of course I can do everything. WeW, I 
obey. The real Augean stable, I am quite sure, was Ivy Lane, 
and the river which was turned into it was the Regent’s Canal. 
It was, in those days, called the River of Knowledge.” 

It was from this conversation that the great Earthly Tract 
Association first had its origin. Attempts have been made, I 
know, to connect the foundation of this most remarkable society 
with other people, and many go about professing themselves to 
have been the founders. But the real founder was none other 
than Valentine ; the first members were only herself and Claude ; 
they began with the expenditure of half a sovereign and the 
printing of a single tract, which Valentine gave to her friends, 
the women of Ivy Lane ; they wrote all the earlier tracts them- 
selves, though it was very early in their history that the doctor 
joined them. Little by little more tracts were written and dis- 
tributed ; then they began to rewrite the first tracts, which nat- 
urally attempted too much, and they recast their original design. 
How the thing grew and extended itself in all directions; how 
people from Manchester and Birmingham and Bradford, where 
they are always open to ideas, heard of these tracts, and sent for 
them, and for more ; how the tracts began to be spoken about ; 
how wealthy people gave them money, and the sale of the tracts 
brought in more money, and how they were obliged to have an 
office and to take in clerks, and how that office is spreading into 
a great warehouse, and the tracts are being translated into all 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


267 


languages, and how it will very shortly become a vast building 
on the Thames Embankment — all this is history which has to be 
written in the immediate future when the Earthly Tract Society 
shall have done its work and scattered knowledge over the whole 
world, as the late Professor Holloway scattered his advertise- 
ments, and shall have taught people in simple language the con- 
duct of life. “ If,” said the original prospectus of the society, 
“ people had taken as much pains to spread the knowledge of 
things in general as they have taken to spread the knowledge of 
one form of the Christian faith — which they might have done, 
and not left the other undone — the general ignorance would he 
by this time as good as gone ; it would have been swept away 
as by a mop and a bucket.” 

“ The whole of the English-speaking world — that is to say, 
the educated and the uneducated — clearly understand the Chris- 
tian creed as it is -expounded by the Evangelical party ; and this, 
not because the people all go to church, which they do not, nor 
because they read books, for they never read any book ; nor be- 
cause these things are presented to them in the papers, which is 
not the case, for the papers preserve silence on these subjects ; 
nor is it due to their home influences, which make more for the 
derision of all religions than for the deflning of any particular 
form; nor to their schools, because catechisms are no longer 
taught in them ; but wholly, solely, and entirely to the dissemi- 
nation of tracts. Would you therefore ” — one is still quoting 
from the prospectus — “ make the people wise in the conduct of 
life ? Write tracts, give them simple rules of life and the rea- 
sons for them. Then distribute these tracts broadcast among 
the people, from street to street and from house to house — keep 
on distributing tracts. Prepare a tract, or a series of tracts, for 
every virtue and for every vice, setting forth as faithfully as the 
religious tracts have done for many years, the true doctrine and 
the consequence of violating its laws.” 

“ The flrst thing,” said Claude, while this prospectus was un- 
der consideration, “ is to write the tracts.” 

“ That of course, Claude, you will do.” 

“ Of course, Valentine, I am an encyclopaedia.” 

“ You can consult an encyclopaedia. Let us begin at once.” 

“ We will form ourselves,” said Claude, “ into an association. 
You shall be the president, I will be the secretary ; we will call 


268 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


ourselves the Earthly Tract Society, to distinguish ourselves 
from the older association, which has never attempted the im- 
provement of the world in comfort, culture, and manners. I 
think the name sounds well and will carry weight. And now, 
Valentine, let us begin to set down some of the tracts we shall 
want and to give them their titles.” 

Let no one think it an easy matter to write a tract. Many of 
the earlier ones, for instance, those that were first issued, proved 
quite useless, because they were pitched a note too high or a 
note too low. A tract must have a definite thing to say, and it 
must say that thing with great vigor and plainness, and without 
the least chance of mistake ; the propositions laid down must 
be, if possible, those which are not capable of denial ; and they 
must be stated with attractiveness. No tract, for instance, must 
contain a theory or anything which may be argued against 
Every tract must also be short ; and perhaps it is as well that 
there should be half a dozen tracts on the same subject; it is 
well, also, that the tract should be signed, because people like a 
man who is not afraid to advance his opinions. Sometimes a 
dialogue may prove the most useful way of presenting the sub- 
ject — sometimes a fable, sometimes a story, sometimes a piece 
of history ; in fact there is no form of literature which may not 
be pressed into the service of the Earthly Tract Association, ex- 
cept satire. This would be a perfectly useless weapon when 
employed against the habits of the working classes. One might 
as well address them in Greek or Hebrew. 

The most successful of the'early series were, I think, all writ- 
ten by the partnership, and among them, especially, were the 
Domestic series. It began with the Tract on Wives, meaning 
the right treatment of a wife, with her husband’s plain duties 
towards her ; the corresponding Paper on Husbands ; on Chil- 
dren, with a parent’s duty to his offspring ; on Language, the 
word used in its popular sense, and with special reference to 
the use of the universal adjective ; on the House ; on Woman’s 
Clothes ; on Dinners ; on Clean Streets ; on Water ; on Fresh 
Air; on Amusements; on Holidays; on Beer; on Pretty 
Things ; on Dressing the Hair ; on Boots ; on Wages, high and 
low; in the last-named tract the working-men are first ap- 
proached, but with great delicacy, on the subject of permitting 
their girls to take less wages than will keep a girl strong and 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


269 


healthy ; on Hours of Work ; and so on. When the doctor 
became associated with them he contributed the well-known 
tracts on certain forms of disease, and how they may be pre- 
vented ; on certain elementary principles of Physiology ; on 
Food, and what should be eaten ; on Exercise ; on Tobacco ; 
and many others. It was later that the series of tracts ap- 
peared which dealt with the duties and privileges of an English 
subject ; it was from these papers that the English workman 
learned for the first time, with considerable astonishment, what 
neither his school nor his newspaper had taught him, the pro- 
digious extent and wonderful history of his own country, how it 
grew, and how it must be preserved and developed, his own in- 
heritance in the world and what it means to be an Englishman. 
The latest tracts of all are those on the co-operation of men and 
women, and if these tracts are to bring about the doctor’s Uni- 
versal League of Labor, it will be interesting to watch that body 
and to consider its ways. One need hardly stop to notice the 
very remarkable effects of the tracts upon Ivy Lane, because 
they are already well known, and. the place has now become a 
show street. The houses are as beautifully clean as a Dutch 
village, the blinds are white, the little chapel has become a con- 
cert and dancing room, the Adelaide Tavern is the Street Club ; 
there are flowers in every window, and these are clean ; wuthin, 
the floors are scrubbed, walls are dusted, water is filtered ; the 
men have quite left off getting drunk ; they never swear unless 
the situation demands strong and plain words ; they do not beat 
their wives ; the women do not scream and fly into rages ; quar- 
relling among them is almost unknown ; all alike have grown 
critical over their meat, their beer, their tea, their coffee, their 
bread, and their dress ; every family saves something every week ; 
and the universal adjective has quite fallen into contempt, though, 
I confess, it may still be heard in other parts of London. 

More important still is the growth and development of the in- 
stitution founded to run side by side with the Earthly Tract So- 
ciety, that of the Street Committees. Every street has now its 
own committee, elected by the inhabitants. Up to the present 
time their functions have been almost entirely sanitary ; but 
they are gradually invading the region of morals, and they are 
already the terror of the dustman and the dread of the vestry, 
and the cause why landlords blaspheme. Besides, other streets 

S 


270 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


have followed the example of Ivy Lane. There is, as mentioned 
above, a movement in Clinger Street ; there is a shaking in Myr- 
tle Row, and Bacchus Walk has already elected its committee. 
It is to the Street Committees that the Earthly Tract Society 
look most confidently for the carrying out of their most ambi- 
tious projects. For in morals and in sanitary measures, and in 
the general conduct of life, nothing can be forced on the people 
which the people have not resolved upon getting for themselves. 
But consider the possibilities of a Street Committee. Where 
would the wicked man find a home if the Street Committee be 
watchful for righteousness ? Where would the Fenian and the 
Dynamiter rest their heads if the Street Committee refuse to 
receive them ? What will be the fate of that landlord who re- 
fuses to keep his houses in repair? What that of the tenant 
who refuses to do his share of the cleaning-up work ? And how 
long, think you, will the Street Committee suffer the women to 
live under the Law of Elevenpence Ha’penny ? There will come 
a time — one sees it already in the close future — when the pick- 
pocket shall find no home anywhere, and the burglar no place to 
store his swag and keep his jemmy ; when all evil-doing shall 
be driven out of the land, and faith, goodness, charity, hope, 
and the love of beauty and the desire for art shall spring up like 
flowers in the sunny month of June, and the men shall at last 
join hands and shall swear by the Living God the women shall 
no longer be robbed and wronged. 

Moses, as we know, proceeded on the method of inculcating 
all his laws and precepts together — the Earthly at the same time 
as the Heavenly. But then he had a Chosen People, and even 
with them the result of this method did not yield results by any 
means so satisfactory as might have been desired. Perhaps 
Claude and Valentine were wise in their generation when they 
made their people clean first and taught the nobler truths next, 
and left religion to those who profess religion. 

But I am sorry to say that the assistant priest of St. Agatha’s 
refused to assist in writing the tracts, or in their distribution, 
because they were not in the first place put under the protection 
of the Church, and because poverty and disease were treated as 
things which ffiight be removed by wise treatment, and nothing 
was said about the duty of discipline, confession, and penance, 
and because the institution of Lent was left out of the pro- 
gramme altogether. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


211 


CHAPTER XVIL 

THESTEPWITHOUT. 

About a fortnight after that strange and terrifying dream 
came to Mrs. Monument, and when she had at length completely 
shaken off the horror of it and nearly forgotten to dread its re- 
turn, it did come again, like some foul spirit who refuses to be 
laid. It came just as before, with the sound of a remembered 
footfall. There is no one single man in the whole habitable globe 
who is not unlike every other man as regards every single feat- 
ure, detail, and particular of mind and of body. For instance, 
you may secure the identification of a man for life by taking an 
impression on wax of his forefinger or thumb, because the curves 
and corrugations of the skin differ with every man and are pe- 
culiar to him. Each of us is individual, and stands alone in the 
universe — in complete isolation — a thing curious and terrifying 
to consider. Most marked of all is a man’s footstep, which, 
once recognized, can never be mistaken or forgotten. So that, 
when that dead man’s footstep came again, Mrs. Monument was 
stricken with a terror unspeakable, and tenfold worse than on 
the first occasion. It came in the daytime, too, when such 
things are never expected. If the spirits of the dead walk, it is 
at night and in the dark, though even then it is not usual, nor is 
it recorded of any that they walk in boots and reproduce the 
old, familiar footstep. I have never yet heard this thing of any 
ghost, nor have I ever yet seen any who walked in boots. There 
have been instances — but they are few — of daylight apparitions, 
but tradition and custom have established a prejudice against 
the mixture of sunshine with the spirit world. This is the rea- 
son why the supernatural terror — a thing quite apart from any 
other feeling — is so much more terrible by day than by night. 
A nightmare we know : not a pleasant creature, but familiar, and 
an old acquaintance in whatever form it comes. But a daymare 
— that, if you please, is a thing so uncommon and of such rare 


272 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


experience that it belongs to the category of nameless things 
which follow after the long list of devils, imps, ghosts, elves, 
fiends, afreets, jinns, and spectres which possess and enjoy, like 
peers of Great Britain, their titles and ranks. 

It was in the evening, but before sunset. The old lady had 
taken her tea and sent Rhoda home. She expected her daugh- 
ter Polly, and she sat in her great chair beside the empty fire- 
place, knitting in hand, waiting with the stolid patience of the 
blind. The evening was warm, and, after a comfortable tea, one 
may sometimes experience a fuller sense of comfort than is gen- 
erally the lot of mortals, and Mrs. Monument was just then com- 
pletely free from rheumatism, and had no other kind of ache, 
pain, or disease either beginning or going on or coming to an end, 
which is unusual when a person reaches the age of sixty. All these 
causes combined made Mrs. Monument drop her eyes and her knit- 
ting, ojie after the other, and persuaded her to nod her head with 
the royal condescension only to be observed at such moments, 
and then to let her soul lie down and be at rest, while her eyes 
dropped and her lips opened. Mrs. Monument was fast asleep. 

She slept peaceably for half an hour. The almshouses were 
always quiet behind their brick wall, but to-day all the colle- 
gians, except herself, were out basking in the sun, which is a 
perfect cure for everything when you can get enough of it and 
the place was absolutely silent and peaceful. The continual 
rolling outside of carriages and carts, the tramp of the footsteps 
on the pavement, were audible, it is true, because they were go- 
ing on all day long, and the greater part of the night, just on the 
other side of the wall, but no one in the houses ever heard them 
or noticed them, nor did they break the slumbers of the lightest 
sleeper, nor did they add anything to the most grievous headache. 

Suddenly Mrs. Monument awoke with a cry. She started and 
sat upright, with pale cheek and outstretched arms, and blind 
eyes which rolled helplessly around. 

“ The step ! I heard his step again !” 

She listened. But it did not come again. There was the 
rolling of the tramcar and the jingling of its bells ; there was 
the rumbling of heavy wagons ; there was the whistle of an 
engine on the railway ; there were the steps of passengers ; 
there was a barrel-organ; there was the whistling of a boy. 
But there was not the step which had awakened her. It was a 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


273 


single and solitary step ; a step like Robinson Crusoe’s impres- 
sion of one — only one — foot on the sand — a single footfall — a 
mysterious footfall — where was the other foot ? Was it a one- 
legged seven-league boot ? Mrs. Monument sat listening for an- 
other, but no other touched her ears. 

Then she sprang to her feet, and, with every outward sign of 
terror, with trembling hands and parted lips, she began to grope 
and feel about the room, stopping every moment to listen, lest 
the step should fall again and should escape her. But she could 
find nothing ; she could hear nothing ; as for the footstep, she 
would have heard it, she thought, fifty yards away. Why, she 
had heard it once before — the footstep which had been silent 
for twenty years, but which she never could forget ; once before 
it smote her ear in the middle of the night, and now in daytime, 
close beside her, in the very room she heard it — a soft and gen- 
tle step, which she could not mistake. 

She felt about the open door ; she came out into the little court, 
and stretched her hands out as if in search of space illimitable. 

“ It was the dream,” she murmured. “ It was the dream come 
back again. But there was some one in the room. I know 
there was some one in the room.” 

She knew it by the instinct of the blind, who feel the pres- 
ence of things without seeing or touching them. 

And while she stood there, a pitiful spectacle of fear and hor- 
ror, the latch of the gate was lifted, and her daughter Polly came 
into the closed garden of the almshouse. 

Mrs. Monument was wrong. It was no dream. She had heard 
her husband’s footstep, because he was standing before her, look- 
ing her full in the face. He was not dead at all, but alive. And 
he was enlarged ; they had suffered him to go free ; he was re- 
leased with a document entitled, after the name of a celebrated 
play, the “ Ticket of Leave.” He had called a day or two after 
his release to see his wife, as a husband should, after nearly 
twenty years of separation. She was, on that occasion, gone to 
bed, and so he came away. Business, that is to say, an eager 
and wolflike pursuit of pleasure and drink after twenty years of 
abstinence, kept him away for a whole fortnight. Now, his 
money being well-nigh spent, he called again. 

A little while before Mrs. Monument woke up so suddenly and 


274 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


cried out, and began to carry on in so surprising a manner all by 
berself, there came along the road, on the east side of it, where 
the sunshine falls in the afternoon and evening, and where, for 
that charitable reason, they have planted most of the almshouses, 
a man somewhat advanced in years. He was dressed neatly in 
a sober gray tweed suit, and wore a round hat. He was slightly 
built, and a little below the middle height; a thin, spare man, 
with sharp features and small, delicate hands ; his hair was short 
and quite gray, and his cheek was smooth shaven. His features 
were small and fine, especially his mouth ; his eyes were bright, 
and surrounded with quite a cobweb of crow’s-feet and wrinkles. 
He had something the appearance of a gentleman’s servant, a 
butler in a great house, a hall porter in a club, or something ex- 
tremely respectable in the service, and therefore he seemed out 
of place in a region where there are few gentlemen’s servants 
kept, and where clubs are unknown except for political purposes. 
Certainly a most respectable person, with a little awkwardness 
about his manner of walking, as if he were a stranger to crowded 
streets. Pre’sently he stopped in front of a low brick wall with a 
gate in the middle of it and hesitated. Then he lifted the latch, 
opened the gate, and stepped within, where was the garden of 
the almshouses, and behind the garden the row of cottages. 

The man turned to the right, and walked straight to the last of 
the cottages, that, namely, which belonged to Mrs. Monument. 
It might have been noticed by an observant person that he walked 
almost noiselessly, an art which may be acquired by anybody, but 
it requires study and much practice. When you have acquired it 
you have also acquired the stealthy style, much spoken of by the 
better class of novelists, those, namely, whose publishers sell their 
productions at a penny the complete novelette. This style may 
be of advantage to some kinds of professional men, especially if, 
as this gentleman was, they happen to be burglars by profession. 
When the man reached the door of the cottage, which stood wide 
open, he looked in. Beside the empty fireplace, in her chair, sat 
an old woman with white hair asleep. 

The man looked at her curiously. 

“ She is changed,” he murmured. “ 1 wonder if she will know 
me, and I wonder what she will say when she sees me ? I won- 
der if she knows I am alive ?” 

He stepped aside noiselessly, and looked about the little room. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


275 


The woman still slept undisturbed. There was nothing in the 
room worth stealing if he wished to steal ; nor was there any- 
thing particularly interesting to look at ; but his eyes fell upon 
the shelf of books, and he nodded with a kind of satisfaction. 
So long as the books — his books — were there, he was not for- 
gotten. On the table was some knitting-work and needles in a 
basket, and laying with the work a torn envelope. He took this 
out — being an extremely curious person — and read the address 
upon it : “ Claude Monument, Esq., 25 King’s Bench Walk, Tem- 
ple.” It had been, in fact, left there by Valentine. 

Claude Monument ! He remembered now ; there was a son 
of his named Claude — Claude Duval. The boy was living, then, 
or at least working in the Temple, where the lawyers live ; per- 
haps a lawyer’s clerk. His own son a lawyer’s clerk ! Strange 
irony of fate ! He folded the letter, and placed it carefully in 
his pocket. It might be useful. This man was none other, in 
fact, than the great James Carey himself, once the acknowledged 
head of his profession, formerly the prince of burglars. And 
he was set loose again upon an unsuspecting world after twenty 
years of seclusion. When such a man as James Carey is set 
free the world ought to be warned. It was his step that the poor 
woman of the almshouses had actually heard in the evening. He 
had come ; he had found the room dark and empty, and he had 
gone away again. Now he was come back to make his release 
known to his affectionate family, and to look around. Twenty 
years of prison fare and life do not make a man inclined for hon- 
est work ; and if there was any money to be got out of his wife 
and children before “ jobs ” began to offer themselves again he 
might as well get that money. 

Perhaps he stepped upon a loose plank ; perhaps he forgot his 
habitual caution — I know not — but suddenly the woman started 
in her sleep, sat bolt upright, and shrieked, “ His step ! I hear 
his step again !” 

In an instant he saw that his wife was blind ; her glaring eyes 
rolled over him, so to speak, as if he were not present ; he saw 
her blindness in her outstretched hands and gestures of helpless- 
ness. The thing was quite unexpected, but, with quick step and 
without the least noise, he crossed the threshold, stepped over 
the flagstones, and took up his position among the cabbage- 
stumps outside, where he waited and watched. 


276 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


His wife was blind and in an almshouse. He had made up his 
mind that there would be changes. People do not stand still ; 
the children would be grown up ; perhaps they would be ashamed 
of their father ; their mother, he knew, regarded his exploits with 
a most extraordinary and unaccountable prejudice. He had no 
doubt that she had tried to make them respectable, whereas, if 
he had had his way with the children, there would not have been 
in the whole world a cleverer or a more successful gang of plun- 
derers, a more united and happy family, or one which lived more 
merrily and enjoyed more abundantly the fruits of the earth — 
other people’s fruits, of course — in due season. Shame, that a 
man should not be permitted, even in prison, to direct the educa- 
tion of his own children in their own interests. But if they were 
respectable and unwilling to own their father, he must then — he 
had thought it all out — ^he must compel them to pay for his silence 
and suppression by a weekly subsidy. But who would have 
thought that his wife would go blind ? He did not know what 
to say or how to act, and therefore he did nothing, but watched. 

She came trotting to the door and stretched out her arms to 
the world, crying, “ Who is there ? Who is there ?” 

The man made no reply. He had fully intended to present 
himself, and to say, “ Here I am back again. Give me all the 
money you have got in the place. Tell me where all the children 
are. I shall want money till I get back to my old work. As for 
repentance, don’t think of it, and as for talking, stow it.” This 
was the amiable speech he had proposed to make. But his wife 
was blind as well as gray, and, for some spark of humanity still 
lurking in his breast, he could not make that speech. While he 
stood among the cabbage-stumps there suddenly appeared be- 
tween his wife and himself a third person — a young lady. 

“ Mother,” she said, taking the blind woman’s hand, “ what is 
it ? Oh, what is it ” For she connected the terror and the help- 
less hands with the strange man standing, silent, opposite to the 
door. 

“ It’s the dream come back. Oh ! Polly, thank God you’ve 
come, my dear ! It’s the dreadful dream. I heard his step a 
fortnight ago, in the night — once — once only — upon the stones — 
and again I heard it just now — once. My dear, my dear, I’m fright- 
ened out of my wits. Is it the dead come back to plague me ?” 

“ The step again ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


277 


“Your father’s step, my dear. And something there was in the 
room. I felt it. Something in the room. His ghost most likely.” 

Valentine turned upon the man a face so full of horror and 
loathing and shame that it actually pierced him to the heart, 
though his conscience was long since seared with a hot iron, and 
twenty years of prison had only hardened him. Yet those eyes 
made him shiver, and he dropped his own. 

“ What a strange thing !” She kept her eyes upon the man 
as one keeps his eyes upon a wild beast. “You are sure you 
heard his step ?” 

“ Quite sure. As if I could ever forget his step !” The man 
smiled complacently. “ I heard it on the boards, falling as soft 
as the step of a cat. And, oh, Polly — thank God you’ve come !” 
she repeated, clinging to her daughter.” 

“ Why, mother,” she replied, in a strange voice and with burn- 
ing cheeks, “he is dead long ago — five years ago ;” she held up 
a warning finger to the man. “ Thank Heaven ! the miserable, 
wretched man died in his miserable, wretched prison, where he 
deserved to die, and was buried in the prison churchyard, where 
he deserved to be buried, among the thieves and rogues, his 
companions. Don’t tremble so, mother ; he is dead ; we have 
forgotten him and all his villainies.” 

“Yes, my dear, yes. But your own father, my dear. Don’t 
speak ill of your father and your mother, because it brings bad 
luck. And him dead, too. But why did I hear his step ?” 

“ I don’t know. There is nobody here, dear,” she said, men- 
daciously, and with another warning gesture with her finger. 
“You were dreaming again. Now go back, and sit down and 
calm yourself. As for me, I am going to get you something for 
your supper — a lettuce, I think. Yes, I will be back in five min- 
utes. Go and sit down, dear. Oh ! you poor, dear old thing, 
what a fright you have had ! Sit down now. I am here, you 
know, and if anybody offered to frighten you I would — I would 
kill him.” She said this with such ferocity in her eyes that the 
man in the garden trembled. 

She placed the old woman in her chair. Then she w'ent out- 
side again, and silently beckoned the man to follow her. He 
obeyed her, walking among the vegetables, where his footsteps 
were not heard. 

Outside the place, Valentine took the first turning to the right. 


278 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


whicli happened to be a new street of gray-brick houses not yet 
finished. Nobody ever walks in unfinished streets of gray-brick 
houses, not even lovers, who will walk anywhere else, but not in 
unfinished streets, between lines of dreadful gray bricks. On 
Sundays the jerry-builder walks there alone, and wonders how 
long his houses are likely to stand. 

Presently she stopped and turned fiercely upon the man. 

“ Oh, wretch !” she cried ; “ I know who you are. Oh, mean 
and skulking wretch ! We thought you were dead ; we rejoiced 
that you died, like a miserable rat in a trap, in your prison cell, 
and were buried in the prison churchyard.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“ Silence ! Don’t dare to speak. Let me think.” 

For she understood that the most dreadful thing in the world 
that could happen to them had happened. Dreadful to every 
one of them. To the poor old lady, to Joe, the honest and re- 
spectable Joe, who had nothing but his good name, to Sam, to 
Melenda, and, most dreadful of all, to Claude — no, no — Violet 
must never know, whatever else happened, whoever else suffered. 
She understood what this man meant, and she was filled with 
wrath because she was not his daughter. 

“ You are not dead, then ; and the first use you make of your 
liberty is to terrify your wife. You ought to have slunk into 
some corner where no one knew you, and buried your shameful 
head there till you died. Oh ! I know your story, your misera- 
ble, disgraceful story.” 

“You called her mother,” he said, stupidly staring, “and 
you’re a young lady likely, or perhaps only a young lady’s maid.” 

She made no reply. 

“ If she’s your mother you must be my daughter.” 

Again she made no reply. 

“ And a precious, dutiful daughter she’s made you.” lie cleared 
his throat and began to pluck up his spirits. “ I’ll have it out 
of her for this. You mind that. I’ll have it out of her, and I’ll 
have it out of you, too — both of you — all of you.” He stopped 
to swear a little — just a little — meaning to swear a great deal be- 
fore he finished. “Now, then, where’s your obedience? Where’s 
your Fifth Commandment — before I take and wring your undu- 
tif ul and impudent neck ?” 

He did use much stronger language, but that was the sub' 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


279 


stance of his remarks, and the rest may be understood. He also 
doubled his fist and shook it in Valentine’s face, but not with 
much confidence. 

“ If you dare to touch me with your little finger,” said Valen- 
tine, “ I will shake you to a jelly, you miserable creature !” 

She was taller than this slight, small-limbed man, and a good 
deal heavier. Moreover, there was in her eyes a light of wrath 
so lurid, and on her cheeks such a fiery glow, and she looked so 
remarkably as if she could do it, and would rejoice in doing it, 
that the man was cowed. But he looked dangerous. 

“Well, then, you’re my daughter, I suppose,” he went on, 
sulkily. “ What’s your name ?” 

“They call me Polly,” she replied, with some hesitation. 
“ Your youngest child was baptized Marla.” 

“ A pretty Marla you are,” he said. “ This comes of a girl 
growing up without a father’s care. And how do I know what 
you do for a living ? Marla — yes, I remember now. One forgets 
a many things in quod. Marla it was. I made up the name my- 
self from a beautiful book about pirates and scuttlin’ ships and 
fighting with marlin’-spikes — they don’t keep them books in quod. 
And the other gal was Melenda. And that name I made, too. I 
forget how I made that name — Mile End, was it ? Mile End in 
the book ? — I forget. And there was three boys — J oe was the eld- 
est — and Sam and Claude ; a pretty boy Claude was. Like me 
he was. I chose his name, too, after Claude Duval, the prince 
of highwaymen.” 

Valentine shuddered. Yes, Claude was like him ; and so, 
alas ! was Violet. The likeness was unmistakable. 

“ Come,” he said, “ don’t go on like a she devil. I’m back 
again. You can’t get over that. Let’s be jolly. Lord ! I don’t 
want quarrels. I never did. Your mother ’ll tell you that I was 
always a man for peace and quietness, if such was to be had 
with my ’bacca and my grog, or it might ha’ been my port wine 
and my sherry wine. And you’re a pretty girl, my dear, with a 
fine spirit of your own. There ! I respect you for it. You’re 
the girl to stand up for you mother, ain’t you, now ? Kiss your 
old father, Marla, my dear.” 

He made as though he were about to kiss her. Valentine — I 
shudder; one cannot choose but shudder — Valentine shrank 
back, and, with a cry of disgust, actually lifted her hand and 


280 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


struck the man on the cheek with so hearty a good-will that he 
reeled. King Richard Lion Heart never dealt a better stroke. 
That this wretched convict, this common felon, should offer to 
kiss her ! 

“ Oh !” she cried, “ if you dare to touch me I will kill you.” 

The man picked up his hat, which had fallen off, and stared 
stupidly. That a girl should chastise her own father ! 

“ Oh ! what a pity, what a thousand pities,” Valentine went 
on, pitilessly, “ that you are not dead.” 

He began to whine, holding his hat in his hand, and address- 
ing the unsympathetic gray bricks and the scaffolds. 

“ I return home,” he complained, “ after twenty years. The 
moment I am out I hurry to my wife’s humble home. I have put 
off the old man, and am resolved to lighten her lot and cheer her 
declining years, which is a shadow of things to come. I am full 
of repentance, and count all things else but loss, as I frequently 
told the good chaplain. My feet are now shod with the prepara- 
tion of the gospel of peace, and I walk in love. I told him that, 
too, and he believed it” — the man actually grinned. Then he 
became serious again. “ As for my character, my only anxiety 
is to redeem it ; and having been a brand ready for the burning, 
but now plucked from the fire, I expected treatment accordingly. 
And this is what I get ! A daughter who calls me names, and 
strikes her old father. Strikes her poor, old, gray -headed, infirm, 
tottering father. But I offer the other cheek.” He did so osten- 
tatiously, but Valentine took no advantage of the offer. “ This 
is the Christian spirit of my child. Take the other cheek. It 
may kill me. But take it. I have had my faults ; I own that I 
have had faults ; but I always loved my children. Let me go to 
your mother, Marla. She will receive me in a better spirit. He 
that loveth his wife loveth himself. Let me find out my four 
other dear children. There is Samuel — my son Samuel. I hope 
he is given to virtuous courses. And Melenda — my dear, pretty 
Melenda. I pray that she is a Christian and a churchgoer, and 
all a penitent and forgiven father, who has worked out his sen- 
tence, and got a good character again, can hope to find. And 
there is Claude — ” 

“ Stop !” cried Valentine, imperiously. 

He obeyed, watching her with furtive and evil looks. 

“ I know,” Valentine continued, after a little reflection, “ that 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


281 


you can talk. You deceived your poor wife by your lies and 
your glib talk into marrying you. Let us have no more speeches. 
Now listen to me” — her words were brave, but her heart was 
beating. “ Listen to me ” — she took courage by the aspect and 
appearance of the man, who watched her like a cowed and fright- 
ened cur — “ you are to go away from here — quite away to anoth- 
er part of London. I don’t care where you go. You are never 
to see your wife again, or attempt to see her, or write to her, 
or let her know in any way that you are alive. Oh ! we have 
thanked God so often that you are dead that we cannot afford 
to have you coming to life again. You are a dead man, do you 
hear ? First of all,” she repeated, “ you are never to see or to 
communicate with your wife. Never — never.” 

“ I hear. What the devil’s coming next, I wonder ?” 

Meantime he had observed — he had not forgotten his old trick 
of observation — two or three things which struck him with won- 
der and made him reflect. The girl had white, delicate hands ; 
her fingers were not marked or pricked with any kind of work ; 
her dress, which was simple, was well made, and she wore dainty, 
well-made boots. It is only a lady who wears good boots, he 
thought, because he had in his old days made careful studies 
of the sex for professional purposes. But how in the world 
could his daughter be a lady ? 

“ The next thing is that you are not to try to communicate 
with any of your children, or find out where they live ? Do you 
hear ? You shall not make their lives shameful for them by 
your loathsome and horrible presence.” 

“ Suppose I won’t promise ? Why should I ?” 

“ In that case you shall get no help. I promise you so much 
— not the least help from any of us. We shall keep you from 
your wife by main force if necessary. You may starve in the 
ditch and we will not help you.” 

I have often wondered how Valentine would have received 
this man had she not known the whole truth concerning Polly- 
which-is-Marla. One or two things are quite certain. She would 
not have used language of such excellent plainness ; nor would 
she have boxed his ears ; nor would she have been so unhesi- 
tating in her manner and her action. 

‘‘ I only want honest work,” he said, with a whine. “ Give 
me honest work and I will trouble no one. You sha’n’t know 


282 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


you’ve got a father. I forgive you for yoiir hard words — for 
your blows. Let us — oh ! let us walk in love.” 

“ I do not believe that you want work at all,” said Valentine ; 
“ you did not work before you went to prison, and I do not be- 
lieve that you want to begin now. You want drink and tobacco, 
and nothing to do. Well ; I will give you what you want — 
on conditions. What money have you ?” 

He sadly replied that he had nothing, not a copper ; w^hich 
of course was a lie. He went on to explain, forgetting that he 
had already said he was just out of prison, that he had spent 
such money as was due to him in the fruitless search after work. 

“ I am weary and footsore,” he said, with a sigh. “ Weariness 
I complain not of, and footsoreness is my righteous punishment.” 

“Lift up your foot.” The man obeyed. Twenty years of 
prison make a man ready to obey anybody. “ It is false ; your 
boots are quite new ; you have not walked about at all.” 

“ And yet she is my daughter — my own little Marla ! That I 
thought would have sat upon my poor knees and comforted my 
broken heart. And she’s got a hard heart — oh ! what a hard 
heart ! I’d rather have my footsoreness than such a hard heart.” 

“ I do not want any promises or assurances from you at all,” 
Valentine went on, “and I want no more hypocrisies. I will 
give you — I will give you” — she considered how little she might 
offer — “a sovereign a week so long as you keep away. The 
moment you seek to find out any of your children or terrify 
your wife the allowance ceases. Do you hear and understand ?” 

“ Yes, I hear. What’s a sovereign ? It isn’t worth making 
a promise about. I can spend a sovereign a day and think 
nothing of it.” 

“ Then earn a sovereign a day.” 

“ If you can get a sovereign a week to give away, you can get 
two. I sha’n’t ask how you get it, my dear. Lord ! everybody 
knows that a lady’s maid — you look like a lady’s-maid — generally 
gets opportunities.” He looked so desperately cunning that 
Valentine longed to box his ears again. When a woman begins 
boxing of ears there’s no saying where she may leave off — witness 
the case of certain czarinas and other ladies who have had com- 
mand of the knout and the flagellum and the stake. “ Spring it 
to two sovereigns for your poor old father, Marla, my child.” 

“ I will give you one and no more — but only on my own con- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


283 


ditions. Here is the first week’s money.” She opened her purse 
and took out the golden coin. His eyes greedily grasped the 
fact that there were many more lying in the purse. “ It is the 
last if you break my conditions. If you do not, I will send 
another next week to the address you may name.” 

She gave him a leaf from a pocket-book, and he wrote on it 
an address to some street in the East-End. 

“ You can write to me to the almshouse ; to the care of my 
mother. But don’t sign your letter ; and don’t dare to address 
me — me — as your child.” 

“ Who are you, then ?” he asked, looking at her with admi- 
ration and surprise. “ Who are you, if you are not my child ? 
A daughter of Hester Monument should be standing over a 
wash-tub. What are you ?” 

“ That I shall not tell you. Remember that there is not one 
of your children — not one of them who knows the truth — who 
will not receive you with shame and horror unutterable. There 
is not one who will give you a helping hand except myself. You 
have your choice. Take my twenty shillings a week and go away 
and get drunk among the rogues and villains — your friends. If 
you refuse my conditions, or offer to molest any of us, you 
shall see how much you will get from all of us together. Go !” 

There were two or three things in this speech which filled Mr. 
Carey with pain — especially to be told that his children regarded 
him with shame. Every man who becomes, whether by his own 
consent or not, a hermit for twenty years, builds up during his 
isolation an effigie of himself. Mr. Carey knew that he had re- 
tired amid a blaze of popularity ; the papers were full of him 
and his exploits ; portraits were sold of him in the Illustrated 
Police News and elsewhere ; he knew that he stood first in the 
profession, which is a proud thing for anybody in any profes- 
sion to say. He was the Premier Burglar. He was the gallant 
hero who pitted his own ingenuity and resources against all the 
intellect and the strength and the organization that the richest 
country in the world can command. To be caught and clapped 
in prison was a defeat, to be sure, but there was all that glory — 
“ loathing and horror ” — the girl called it. This, then, was their 
mother’s influence — their mother’s; the influence of one who 
could never rise to the level of his greatness. 

And she said he had consorted with rogues and villains. 


284 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


Rogues and villains — rebels when successful become revolution- 
ists — would willingly have consorted with him, but he would 
have none of their companionship. He lived apart from the 
vulgar criminal ; he consorted not with the common burglar. 
He worked alone, and he lived apart from his fellow-professionals. 

I do not suppose that Mr. Carey expected to be received with 
open arms. But he did expect some show of respect — at least 
that respect due to his position in the walk of life he adorned. 
And to be received with these words of disgust and insult by 
his youngest daughter — it was hard to bear. Had it been her 
mother he would have felt it less, because she was a woman of 
slow imagination and contracted views, and could never under- 
stand his glory. 

“ Go,” said his unnatural daughter. 

He obeyed, and started on his way without a word. 

“ No,” she said, “ not back by that road. You will pass the 
almshouse, and she may hear your footstep again. Go down 
this road.” 

“ I do not know where it leads to.” 

‘‘ I don’t care. Go this way.” 

He obeyed, and walked slowly away, turning from time to 
time like an unwilling cur. Each time he turned his head he 
saw the girl standing in the road w^atching him. 

When he was out of sight, Valentine returned slowly to the 
almshouses. 

“ That was a terrible dream, Polly, wasn’t it ?” 

“ A dreadful dream, mother. But I don’t think it will come 
again. I will stay here to-night just to prevent your having it, 
you know. It won’t come if you think some one is with you.” 

“ Polly, my dear, it is just wonderful the difference since you 
came back. And, oh ! the comfort of having some one that I 
can tell all my troubles to !” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

LE PERE PRODIGUB. 

The ticket-of -leave man went away obediently ; and, once ar- 
rived in the main road, he began to think — that is to say, to 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


285 


devise wickedness. This girl, who said she was his daughter, 
if he could only, in some way or other, get her under his thumb. 
She was a most beautiful girl ; she was possessed of manners 
which would make anybody think her a lady ; she wasn’t afraid 
— heavens ! what could he not do if he had such a girl to work 
for him ? There was once a professional in his own line, a cracker 
of cribs — he had read this story somewhere in the old days 
when he used to read so many books — who had in his power, 
and at his orders, such a girl, whether his daughter or his mis- 
tress he knew not. She went into the finest society and kept 
her eyes about her, and put this fortunate professor on to what 
she observed, and helped him to get into houses, unlocking doors 
for him, slipping the bolts at night, pulling up shutters, and 
opening windows for him. And all the time pretending she 
was a lady. Mr. Carey remembered this beautiful story, and 
dreamed of the wonderful time he might have if Marla would 
only be such a daughter to him. And he dreamed as well of 
the great and glorious reputation he might make for himself ; 
much greater and much nobler even than his first glory, which 
was now, he already perceived with sorrow, well-nigh forgotten. 
In fact, the burglar, like the singer and the actor, is liable to a 
swift oblivion. His works do not, like those of the poet and 
the sculptor, live after him, and there is little to keep his mem- 
ory green, except a few pages, perhaps, in the Newgate Calendar. 

From daughter to son is a natural step. Mr. Carey began to 
think of his son as well — there was another daughter ; but he 
had heard nothing about her, and three sons, all men now ; one 
of them, he knew, was a workman of some kind ; as for the 
other two, what were they ? She dared to make conditions about 
her measly sovereign, did she ? He was not to show himself to 
any of his children. Why — hang her conditions! He would 
do as he pleased. He would go and see his children if he 
pleased. The working-man, he refiected, would certainly be 
married, and as certainly would have no money, except perhaps 
the price of a pint, which is neither here nor there. Besides, 
he had not yet found out where this son lived, nor where the 
second lived. There remained the third, his youngest son, 
Claude, who lived in the Temple. He only knew about the 
Temple that it is a place much frequented by lawyers, a tribe 
whom he naturally disliked, and ranked in the same class with 


286 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


policemen, detectives, and judges. His son was employed there 
in some capacity ; a clerk, no doubt. Every profession, of course, 
preferred to their father’s ! He took the stolen envelope out 
of his pocket. “ Claude Monument, Esquire, 25 King’s Bench 
Walk, Temple.” 

“ It’s a chance,” he said. “ Perhaps the hoy has got some 
money. I’ll risk it.” 

He had been drinking since he left his daughter, and the 
brandy and water, perhaps, gave him the courage to break the 
conditions and so endanger the weekly sovereign. However, 
he did break those conditions, and yet he did not lose his al- 
lowance, as you shall hear. 

About ten o’clock that evening Claude was sitting alone in his 
chambers. He was neither reading nor writing, but the lamp 
was beside him, and a book was on his knees, and he was look- 
ing into the fire, for the evening of early autumn was chilly. 
Outside, the Temple was very quiet. There are only a few now 
who continue to live there, and these were out of town ; I think 
that in all these courts Claude was the only living person except 
the policeman. And there was a silence almost as absolute as 
that which fell upon the place after the suppression of the great 
order and the burning of the grand master and his knights. 

He was thinking about the strange work in which he was en- 
gaged ; and upon Valentine, who thought she was his sister, but 
was not, and of her glowing cheeks and kindling eyes, and the 
voice which moved him like the notes of some great organ play- 
ing mighty music. He was thinking, too, that it would not lead 
to peace of mind if he should continue to think of those eyes 
and that voice. 

In the midst of this silence — he heard no warning footstep 
on the stairs — there was a single knock at his door. 

He wondered who could be his visitor so late and so unex' 
pected. 

It was a stranger ; an elderly man, thin and spare, with gray 
hair, who stood at his door. 

“ I beg your pardon, humbly, sir,” he said, taking ofi his hat ; 
“ I am come in hopes of seeing a boy, sir, a hoy named Claude 
Monument, who works on this staircase. Perhaps he is in the 
housekeeper’s room on the basement.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


287 


Can’t you read ? There is the name on the door.” 

The man read and looked surprised. 

“ I am Claude Monument. What do you want with me ?” 

“ You Claude Monument ? You ?” 

It was rather dark in the passage where Claude stood, but 
the gas-lamp on the staircase showed Mr. Carey that his son was 
not quite what he had expected. 

“ Is your master out of the way, young man ?” he whispered. 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“ Your master. Is he out of the way 

“ My master ?” 

Can you take me where we can have a quiet talk together — 
you and me — without his asking questions ? It’s for you and 
me together, you know.” 

“ Who are you ?” 

“I’ve something important to tell you — something joyful. 
But, I say, you can’t he Claude Monument? Why, you’re 
dressed like a gentleman.” 

“ Who are you ?” 

“ Well, that is just what I have come to tell you.” 

Claude hesitated. “ These are my own chambers,” he said. 

“ Good Lord ! Your own chambers !” The man was amazed. 
“Your own chambers! Your own! How the devil — and the 
gal looked like a lady. Quite time I called and inquired. Look 
here, young man, if you live here, and if you are alone, take me 
inside. I’ve got something to say ; something — ah ! something 
you’ll be pleased to hear. But we ought to be quite alone. It 
is a family secret, young man — a family secret, and it mustn’t 
be talked out loud.” 

“ Come in, then.” Claude admitted the man and shut the 
door, not without some presentiment of coming evil. A pre- 
sentiment never does any good, being in this respect like the 
cold wind before the rain ; it comes too late for a warning, and 
no sooner is it felt than the evil thing is upon one. Yet it is a 
comfort somehow to feel afterwards that one had a presenti- 
ment. Men bitten by rattlesnakes have often been consoled 
in their last moments by this thought. 

“ Now,” said Claude, leading his visitor into the room, and 
shutting the outer oak, “who are you, and what do you want? 
I don’t remember to have seen you before.” 


288 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


There was only a reading-lamp on the table, but the lamp was 
covered by a shade, so that the room was comparatively dark. 
The man had taken off his hat, and was now holding it awkward- 
ly in both hands as if he weren’t used to a hat of that kind ; in- 
deed, he had worn one of quite a different shape for twenty years. 
Claude saw that he was gray-headed and smooth-cheeked, and 
that he was a man of slight build. 

“ Now then,” he said, “ go on with your important news.” 

The man cleared his throat. 

“ Are you really and truly, young man,” he asked, “ Claude 
Monument ?” 

‘‘ That is my name.” Claude owed no man aught, so that the 
man could not possibly have come for money. Perhaps he was 
a beggar of the more complicated kind, a book hawker, or one 
who touts for subscriptions. But beggars of this kind ply their 
trade by day. He felt uncomfortable. 

“ You are the son of Mrs. Monument who used to live beside 
Hackney Marsh, and — if one may speak of it to a swell like 
yourself — took in washing, being a poor but honest woman.” 

“ My mother was a washerwoman,” said Claude. 

“ Well,” the man went on, “ I don’t understand it. You look 
like a gentleman, and the other — ’’here he checked himself — 
“ And you live among the lawyers.” 

“ I live among the lawyers.” 

“ I’ve seen ’em in court — many times, takin’ their characters 
away from unfortunate men. I’ve seen ’em and heard ’em.” He 
added a short but impressive prayer relating to their final doom. 
“ And you live here ! Lord ! his eyes swell out with fatness, 
and look at me without a mag.” 

Who are you, then ?” 

Claude snatched the shade from the lamp. The man was de- 
cently dressed ; he did not look like a beggar ; yet he was cer- 
tainly trying to get something out of him. As for the man’s 
knowing something of his family history, everybody knew that. 
Wherever he went, on his first introduction, or on the first men- 
tion of his name, there followed the whisper, that he had often ac- 
tually heard, and more often saw on the lips of those who uttered 
it. Your own experience of the world, dear reader, will supply 
the words. 

The man did not reply. He was looking about the room. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


289 


wtiicli had a certain appearance of wealth — that is to say, there 
were easy-chairs, pictures, half-a-dozen silver cups won at scratch 
fours and other sports ; and there were a few “ things,” as col- 
lectors say ; there were books — heaps of books — and curtains, 
and carpets, and all the things which go to make a young man’s 
chambers look handsome and well-appointed. On the mantel- 
shelf were two large photographs of two girls. The man recog- 
nized one of them. “ That’s Marla,” he murmured ; “ the other, 
I suppose, is Melenda.” Then he turned sharply to Claude. 

“ Are all these things your own ?” 

Certainly.” 

“ And you leave your mother in an almshouse ! And the other 
one — ” he checked himself again, though the situation was abso- 
lutely incomprehensible. 

Claude reddened, but he kept his temper. 

“ What has that to do with you ?” he said. “ Get to your 
business.” 

“Young man, you leave your mother there — blind, too — 
among paupers, without a sixpence to bestow upon any deserv- 
ing relations and friends who might happen to call — ” 

“ Get on with your business.” 

“ If such is your treatment of your mother, how would you 
treat your unfortunate father?” 

Claude laughed. 

“ For Heaven’s sake, man, tell me what you want, or I shall 
turn you out of the place.” 

“ If your unfortunate father was to come to you, not having 
seen you for twenty years — if he was standing before you poor 
and destitute, as I might he now, hut happy in his mind through 
repentance ; all his old pals scattered, and nothing left him in 
the world hut his hopes of heaven and his good resolutions for 
the path of righteousness, which wraps a poor man as with a gar- 
ment, and keeps off of him the cold wind of poverty ; and with 
his clear conscience and his term worked out and his ticket in his 
pocket, afraid of no man, whether policeman or magistrate — would 
you treat that father with scorn, and send him, like you sent your 
mother, to an almshouse for the remainder of his days ?” 

“ Can you do nothing hut ask questions ? Now, man, come to 
the point or leave the place. As for my father, you may keep 
his name out of it, because he has been dead for twenty years.” 

13 


290 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Suppose he wasn’t dead,” he whispered, hoarsely, looking 
Claude full in the face, but only for a moment, for his shifty 
eyes dropped again. “ Suppose your father wasn’t dead, after 
all?” 

“ I cannot suppose anything of the kind.” 

“ Who told you he was dead ?” 

“ I don’t know. I have always been told he was dead.” 

“ Did they never tell you where and how he died ?” 

“ No ; I never asked.” 

“ And did they tell you what was his trade ?” 

“ My father was a locksmith, and clever at his trade.” 

“ He was. Correct, young man. There wasn’t a finer lock- 
smith in all London, either for making a lock or for picking one 
— or for picking one, mind — which made his fortune and his 
name. There wasn’t a cleverer man at his trade in all England 
— ay, you may throw in the United States as well, though he 
never practised in the States. He was the envy and the pride of 
all such as followed the same trade. A locksmith ! And so that’s 
all you know about it. Lord I to think the children could he so 
bad brought up. So you think your father was a low mechanic, 
do you? That’s what they told you. And that he’s dead. 
That’s what they told you. Well, it’s like them. It’s all part 
of the same treatment. Made you ashamed of your own father ; 
called him a mechanic, did they ?” 

“This is very strange.” Claude by this time felt a profound 
uneasiness in the presence of this man, who looked at him so 
curiously and asked so many questions and gave no answer to 
any. “ Can’t you tell me who you are, and what you want?” 

“ Directly — I will directly. So he was a locksmith, and clever 
at his trade, and he died somewhere. Nobody knows where ; 
none of his children ask after him; no one cares about him; 
they have even dropped his name and taken their mother’s.” 

“ What ! Dropped his name ?” 

“Young gentleman,” he went on, slowly, “ I’ve got a most im- 
portant communication to make. Give me something to make 
it on.” 

“ Here are paper and pens.” 

“ I want drink, man ! Good Lord I I’ve been off of it for 
twenty years, and I’ve only just begun again. Give me some- 
thing, I say, to make it on.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


291 


Claude gave him some whiskey. He drank half a glass of the 
spirit neat, and then a tumblerful mixed in equal proportions. 

“ That’s what I call something to make communications on. 
Now then, I’ll sit down, I think.” 

He sat down. A most comfortable chair, too. You swells 
know how to make yourselves comfortable, don’t you ? And to 
think that you’re a swell, and your mother in an almshouse ! and 
your father out on his ticket of leave !” 

“ What !” Claude started. “ Say that again, man. What do 
you mean by that ?” 

“A dozen times I’ll say it, young man. Your father, I said, 
out on his ticket of leave, I said. Out — on — his — Ticket — Ticket, 
you know — Ticket — of Leave, Leave, you know. For the unex- 
pired part of his term. That’s what I mean.” 

Claude did not call him a liar ; he only gazed stupidly at him. 

“ I will say it a hundred times more if you like,” continued 
the stranger. “ Your father — ” 

“ No ! don’t say it again. Don’t — don’t dare to say it again.” 

“ Why, you are not ashamed of it, are you, mate ? You can’t 
be ashamed of it. A Ticket of Leave is a very honorable thing 
to have. Only well-conducted convicts, and them as can stand 
fast in the faith and can be trusted, and are favorably reported 
on by the good chaplain, ever get a ticket of leave. My good 
chaplain thought very high of me when I came away. Continue 
in prayer, sez ’ee, and watch in the same, he sez.” 

“ Your chaplain ? Yours ? Are you a convict too ?” 

“ Look here, young feller, don’t speak as if convicts was dirt 
beneath your feet. Very likely you’ll be one yourself before 
long. Most chaps are sooner or later. Convict ! Yes, and why 
not? I’ve served my eighteen months, and my two years, and 
my live years, and my five-and-twenty, and by this time I ought 
to know. Convict ? Why, there’s many and many a better fel- 
low in than out, let me tell you. As for yourself, with your 
swell clothes and your pictures and all, I should think you must 
be in before long. It’s a neater turn-out than ever I could show, 
though I was looked up to as the head of the Profession, and 
there wasn’t a man in it but would have worked under me and 
proud. But I worked alone. No one knew where I was, nor 
where I was going next. Yet I never got so far as to rooms in 
the Temple among the lawyers theirselves. What’s your lay, 


292 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


mate? Is it genteel fakin? Is it sport? Is it races, or cards, 
or what — that keeps such chambers as these ?” 

Claude felt dizzy and sick. He could not reply. 

“ You may tell me, my boy, because you see ” — again he low- 
ered his voice and dropped his eyes — “ you see, Claude, it’s a long 
time since you saw me, and o’ course you can’t he expected to 
remember me. But I am your father. Nothin’ else than that, 
my son.” 

“ You ? My father ? You ?” 

The man crossed his legs in his chair and grinned. He had 
told his secret, and he was bolder. 

“ Yes, Claude, I’m your father. I couldn’t get out to see you 
very well, and none of you ever come to see me. Of course, if 
you’d known I was alive you’d have eome regular and as often 
as they let you. Give us your hand, my boy. You’re a well set- 
up lad, and I’m proud of you.” 

“My father? You?” Claude repeated ; but he did not take 
the proffered hand. 

The ticket - of - leave man swore a great oath as loudly as 
if he had been a Norman king. Then he assured Claude 
again, and with much greater emphasis, that he really was his 
parent. 

“ Look here, boy,” he went on, “ you ought to be proud of your 
father. But they’ve never told you about me. Now I’ve got a 
surprise for you — a joyful surprise. Your mother, you see, 
never took any honest pride in my profession, and ran away from 
me, she did, when she found out what I was. Ran away and took 
her maiden name again, and told all her children they were Monu- 
ments. It wasn’t hard to find where she’d gone to, which I did 
first thing when I came out. Bless you, it was the most con- 
- venient thing in the world for me, that little cottage by the 
Marsh ! If ever I was wanted, and when it was convenient to 
lay by for a bit till people got unsuspecting again, I could go and 
lay by there. The neighbors, they thought I was in the seafar- 
ing line, which accounted for my coming and going as I pleased, 
and many’s the hiding-place I’ve made in that cottage unknown 
to that honest woman. She was too proud to take any of my 
money — well, I had all the more to spend, and I had no pals to 
stand in with, and so I lived like a fighting-cock, travelled first- 
class, like a gentleman, and stayed at the best hotels and drank 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


293 


champagne like the out-and-out swell I was. But I never got to 
lodgings like this. I wish now I’d thought of that.” 

Claude stared at him, and listened without saying a word. 

“Well, at last, there I was — five-and-twenty years. So she 
told you all I was dead; and she never told you who her hus- 
band was, nor where he was. My son, I am no other than the 
great Jem Carey, of whom you’ve heard, o’ course.” 

Claude’s face showed no emotion at all on hearing this in- 
telligence. 

“Jem Carey. Why, man, you can’t pretend you never heard 
of Jem Carey, the King of the Burglars, they called him; Prince 
of Housebreakers, some of ’em said. His name was in all the 
papers, and the country rang with his noble name. Jem Carey — 
why, you must have heard talk of Jem Carey ?” 

“ Unfortunately,” said Claude, “ I have never heard of him 
before.” 

“ Oh, Lord !” said Mr. Carey, properly disgusted. “ And you 
the boy that I destined for the profession from the beginning ! 
I said to myself I must have a successor. One of my boys shall 
be brought up to his father’s business. I had you christened 
Claude Duval a purpose, after the most dashing highwayman in 
history.” 

Claude for the first time in his life actually wished that he 
could exchange his Christian name for another — Samuel, for 
instance, or Leviticus, or anything. 

Mr. Carey contemplated his son with'a doubtful eye. There 
was no kindling of joy or of glory in Claude’s aspect, but on the 
contrary a steady look of pain and dismay. 

“Won’t you shake hands then?” He held out a forgiving 
and paternal hand. 

“ No,” said Claude, “ I will not shake hands.” 

“ Very well.” The man put on his hat. “ I will go away 
now. I shall come again when you have got your swell friends 
round you. I will introduce myself to them as a ticket-of-leave 
man and your father.” 

“ You will do as you please.” 

Mr. Carey hesitated. “ Will you give me something to help 
me on my way ?” 

“ Nothing. Be good enough to go.” 

“ Your father is starving.” 


294 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


“That is not true. You are just out of prison. You must 
have some money. Go.” 

“ I come back after twenty years of quod, and I find my boy 
a swell, and this is how he treats his repentant father.” He 
looked as if he were trying to cry. 

“You can go. I have nothing for you. Take yourself and 
your history and your prison cant ” — he shuddered with shame — 
“ out of my chambers. You have my address. You can send 
me yours. Whatever we do for you — if we do anything, re- 
member — will be done on the condition that you keep yourself 
out of the way of everybody.” 

“ I’m going. I am sorry I came to such an unnatural son. 
But I have other children. Yes, they will be kinder to their 
father. They will be Samaritans, if it’s only twopence.” 

Claude made no reply. 

“ There’s my boy Joe, my eldest. Ho doubt he’s a married 
man now, and his wife and children will be pleased to see the 
poor old man, and to take him in. And there is Sam. I can 
very easily find out Sam if I like. I think Sam will be glad in- 
deed to see me. And then there’s my wife in the almshouse. 
Poor old woman ! she hasn’t got any money, but she’ll share her 
crust. And — then there’s the two girls. Very likely those are 
their pretty likenesses.” He pointed to the tw^o photographs. 
“ The girls look the right sort, don’t they ? Which of them 
two, now, is Marla, and which is Melenda ?” 

“ Claude took the photographs and laid them on their faces. 
It was intolerable that this man should so much as look at them. 

“ Stay,” he cried. “ You shall not even try to make yourself 
known to — to my sisters. Ho you hear ? Ho you hear ?” 

He would have seized the man by the collar, but a certain 
filial piety — a filial repugnance — prevented him. It is impossi- 
ble for any one to shake his own father by the collar, however 
badly he may turn out. Valentine, it is true, had boxed Mr. 
Carey’s ears, but then she had her secret, and knew that he was 
not her father ; and, besides, he had offered to kiss her. 

“ Good heavens !” Claude cried, looking at the man with a 
kind of despair. “They said you were dead. We thought you 
dead. We believed — we were told — that you were an honest 
man. You ought to have been dead long ago.” 

“ Ought I ?” The man grinned. “ That’s a question of opinion. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


295 


Why, I mean to live for thirty years more. Prison is a very 
healthy place, my dear boy, whatever you may think, though 
they do cut the diet close. I feel as young and as fit as if I was 
twenty-five instead of sixty. I mean to live to ninety, and I 
shall very likely come here a great deal. Thirty years more I 
intend to live. We shall see each other very often, my son. Oh ! 
very often indeed, Claude, my hoy.” 

Claude made an effort and refrained, even from bad words. 
“You heard what I said about — your daughters.” 

“Explain yourself more clearly, my son. I am afraid you 
presumed to give orders to your father. Whereas you will read 
in the Epistles, ‘ Children obey your parents in all things.’ ” 

“ I said that you must not attempt to find out your daughters.” 

“ Why not, my son ?” 

“ Because your very existence is a shame and a disgrace to us ; 
and because they are happy in believing you to be dead.” 

“ Is that all 2” 

“ No. Because they have never been told, poor things, that 
their father is a convict.” 

Mr. Carey put his hands in his pockets and whistled. 

“ Look ye, my lad,” he said ; “ suppose I want my girls ? Con- 
sider a father’s feelings. However, I am a peaceful man ; I am 
always open to reason. What will you give me ?” 

Claude hesitated. It was clear that this man would have to 
be bought off. But at what price ? 

“ I don’t know,” he replied ; “ I must consult my brother.” 

“ Is he a swell, too ? Hang me if I understand it !” 

“ No ; he’s a locksmith by trade.” 

“ Then I sha’n’t wait for Joe’s opinion. I’m one of them who 
stick to their rich friends. I stay where the money is. Now, 
there’s money here. If you and me don’t come to an under- 
standing — ” Here he interposed a long parenthesis full of all 
the words he had not been allowed to use in prison. It treated 
of his son’s behavior to him and the revolting nature of that un- 
filial loathing which Claude exhibited towards him. This, he 
said, he must and should revenge, unless an understanding was 
come to. “ Then I go straight to the almshouse — I know where 
it is — and I’ll frighten the old woman into fits ; and to-morrow 
I’ll find out Melenda and Marla, and introduce myself to their 
fine friends.” 


296 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


Ten minutes later Mr. Carey walked down the stairs. He was 
richer by thirty shillings than when he mounted those steps. He 
had also the assurance that this sum would he continued to him 
as a weekly allowance so long as he observed two or three sim- 
ple rules. These were, in point of fact, the same as had already 
been made by Valentine. He was not to make his existence 
known, or to force himself upon his wife or any of his children, 
especially either of his daughters. Should he break these con- 
ditions, Claude assured him, in the most solemn manner, he should 
never receive another farthing from himself or from any of his 
brothers and sisters. 

The parent replied that his sole desire was to live virtuously 
and to retrieve the past in the eyes of the world ; gentlemen 
who are penitents of this description always assume that the 
world is following their career with the greatest interest, and yet 
they continue in a retiring modesty about their own antecedents. 
He also said that he should strive to find some quiet corner in 
London where there were none of his old associates, and only 
pious men. Here he should perhaps be enabled, by his son’s as- 
sistance, to open a small shop in the good-book line. He had 
thought of conducting an open-air service on Sundays for peni- 
tents like himself. As for telling any of his family that he was 
alive, or being wishful to force his company upon them, nothing 
could be further from his thoughts. Claude might trust him. 
It was not a great thing for a father to ask the confidence of his 
son. Thirty shillings was little enough for the mere necessities 
of life. But he would make it do. He deserved no more. For- 
tunately he never drank ; that habit he had given up ; he illus- 
trated the remark by taking another glass of whiskey and water. 
He had read a great deal of the Bible while in his cell. Among 
the things he remembered were the gracious words of Paul, 
Corinthians — 

“ That is enough,” said Claude. “ Here is your first week’s 
money. I shall send your next to this address. No ; don’t dare 
to come here for it. I do not want ever to see your face again.” 

“ They’ll never tell each other,” Mr. Carey murmured, going 
softly down the stairs. “ They’ll be ashamed to tell each other. 
And they’re good, between them, for two pound ten a week. 
This is a good day’s work — a very good day’s work.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


297 


CHAPTER XIX. 

IN THE CHURCHYARD. 

When the man left him, Claude remained standing, and me- 
chanically listened for his footsteps on the stairs ; they were as 
light as the steps of a girl and as noiseless ; hut he heard them 
on the gravel in the court below. Then they ceased, and he lifted 
his head and breathed a sigh of relief. He was alone. Some- 
thing to get rid of such a presence, though one knows full well 
that it will come again. Over his mantelshelf there was a cab- 
inet adorned, among other things, with a small square of looking- 
glass. In this Claude caught, as he turned his head, a glimpse 
of his own face. He shuddered and crimsoned with shame — 
for he recognized, unmistakably, the features of the man who 
had just left him. Only for a moment, then the resemblance 
disappeared ; but he had seen it ; he was the son of that man. 

He took up the photographs of the two girls which he had 
laid upon their faces while the man was with him. The same 
resemblance flashed across Violet’s face in the same strange 
and sudden manner, disappearing instantly. It was like the 
evidence of an unwilling witness. “ Behold !” said the picture, 
“ I am none other than that man’s daughter.” 

He was, then, the son of a convicted felon, a burglar, a ticket- 
of-leave man, an habitual criminal; not, as he had formerly 
thought, and often proudly stated,/<z6n filius^^Q son of a Smith; 
not the son of an honest man whose memory he cherished with 
filial pride and admiration ; but the son of a man who had spent 
most of his life in prison ; he had been all his life going about 
under false pretences ; his very name was false ; it was Carey, 
not Monument at all ; James Carey, his father, -was a most no- 
torious and celebrated evil-liver, and his own very Christian name 
was chosen for him in honor of an illustrious thief. His father 
was a burglar and a convict — the one goes very naturally and fitly 
with the other. If a man’s birth were a mystery, and if he were 
13 ^ 


298 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


tempted to pry into the secret in the hope of turning out a baron 
or an earl, and were then to find out that his father was not a 
nobleman at all, hut only a rogue, there would he little pity for 
that man. Because, given an unknown father, and remembering 
that there are more rogues than barons in the world, the chances 
are in favor of the less desirable connection. But when a man 
has all his life rejoiced in the honor of his father, and been as 
proud of him, though he was but a locksmith, as if he had been 
a baronet, and now has without any fault of his own such a father 
sprung upon him suddenly, that man is greatly to be pitied. He 
needs all the pity and all the sympathy that the world has to offer. 
It is one thing indeed to have it whispered that you are self-made, 
son of a working-man ; and another thing to hear it whispered, 
each whisper ringing in your ears like the blast of Fame’s trumpet 
echoed from pole to pole, that you are the son of a — Convict. 

Claude heard that whisper already. The room was full of the 
echoes of that whisper. They rang from wall to wall, from floor 
to ceiling. “ Son of a convict — son of a thief — son of a rogue !” 

“ I will emigrate,” he said ; “ I will take another name — I will 
go to some far-off colony where no one will know who I am.” 

A foolish resolve. Because there is no colony, near or far off, 
which will receive any man without knowing all about him ; who 
was his father ; what he has done ; why he has left his native 
country. He may keep these things secret if he pleases. Prob- 
ably they will be found out for him. In either case, he will en- 
ter no better society than can be found at a bar or in a saloon. 
He will be a declassL 

London is the only possible place for such concealment. He 
who travels, as the poet tell us, may change his sky but not his 
mind. He may also change his name, but never his history — that 
is unchangeable and indestructible — and that, whatever it may 
be, good or bad, these honest colonials insist upon knowing be- 
fore they admit him to their society. 

Claude, ignorant of this fact, remembered immediately that he 
could not emigrate, because it was impossible for him to leave 
his people. He thought of the misery which might come to 
them ; to his mother ; to his brother Joe ; to Sam, proud, like 
himself, of his honest father ; to Melenda — to Valentine first, 
and to Violet next. He remembered their defenceless condition. 
Could he be so cowardly as to leave them ? Could he go away 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


299 


and leave them to the tender mercies of this — creature ? One 
must not under any circumstances speak evil of one’s father; 
one should not, if possible, even think evil of him. Therefore it 
is providential that there exist certain neutral words which carry 
reproach by the manner of expression rather than by any accu- 
sation conveyed in themselves. Thus — “ this ” — gasp — “ Creat- 
ure,” “ this ” — gasp — “ Man,” “ this ” — gasp — “ Woman.” Mo- 
ses said, when he broke the tables of stone, “this” — ^gasp — 
“People.” We can use such words — gasp and all — without 
breaking any commandments — blamelessly, and for the relief 
and solace of the soul. 

He stood in his silent room for an hour at least, trying to look 
the thing in the face, and failing altogether. Then a thought — 
a feeble thought at best — struck him. Joe it was who said 
his father was dead. What if the man was an impostor ? Why 
did Joe say he was dead ? What reason could there be for Joe 
making up a story ? He forgot for the moment the evidence of 
the looking-glass and the photographs, catching, as men in trouble 
do, at a straw. He would go at once and consult Joe. His mind 
was so troubled with the burden of this horrible discovery that 
he actually forgot that it was already midnight. He seized his 
hat and sallied forth with intent to get to Tottenham. 

He walked down Fleet Street, where there were plenty of peo- 
ple about, especially late journalists ; up Ludgate Hill, which was 
still awake ; and along Cheapside, where the stream of life was 
still running, but in a narrow thread. At the Bank there were 
the last omnibuses with a great shouting and a crowd. But 
Cornhill was quiet. Whether the streets were noisy or quiet, 
crowded or empty, made no difference to Claude, who strode on, 
wrapped in his gloomy thoughts. Then he turned into Bishops- 
gate Street and began the long straight walk which leads past 
Shoreditch and along the Kingsland Road and the Stoke New- 
ington Road to Tottenham. The road was nearly deserted now, 
and long before he reached Tottenham the last belated resident 
was safe in bed. Nobody awake, he thought, except the police- 
man and the burg — perhaps he remembered, with a natural shud- 
der, his own father, getting his hand in again, after many years’ 
total abstinence from the jimmy. 

As he walked along the silent road there followed him two 
Voices, speaking in his ear at either side. They kept on repeat- 


300 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


ing the same words, and those very disagreeable words, such as 
“Your father is a convict and a thief — Honor thy father that 
thy days may be long in the land — He has spent most of his 
days in prison — The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the chil- 
dren’s teeth are set on edge — He is a most notorious and even 
historical rogue — ^IJnto the third and fourth generation — The 
most wicked man, probably, that at present lives — That which is 
crooked cannot be made straight — A lawless and impenitent vil- 
lain — His seed shall be destroyed among the children of men — ” 
And so on — one at each side. To stifle these Voices he began 
to think of a certain work on the Mystery of Pain, written by a 
learned physician who persuaded himself that he understood all 
about it. With pain may be considered shame and all kinds of 
evil. Everybody, said the learned physician, should bear it cheer- 
fully if anybody else is relieved or helped by it. But who was 
beneflted by the fact that Claude’s father was a rogue ? And 
who, to put a plainer case, can help another man by having a 
toothache ? This doctrine Claude perceived would not help his 
own case. And then he suffered the Voices to go on again. 

When he arrived at Tottenham and stood at the door of Joe’s 
house, with its closed shutters and drawn blinds, he realized for 
the flrst time that it was the very dead of night, in fact, at two 
o’clock in the morning, when sleep is at its soundest. He might 
knock up his brother, but what excuse could be made to wife and 
children for this unusual disturbance ? Or he might go straight 
home again, which would be absurd after coming all that way. Or 
he might walk about until morning, which was not far off. Or he 
might And a place where he might sit down and gnash his teeth. 

Not many years ago Tottenham was a small country town full 
of pleasant lanes, spacious houses, leafy orchards and splendid 
gardens, with memories of Isaak Walton, and the High Crown 
and the famous arbor — “the contexture of woodbines, sweet- 
briar, jasmine, and myrtle ” — and the Seven Sisters, and many 
goodly mansions inhabited by great London merchants, and of 
Quakers fiery for the faith and abounding in good works. The 
Quakers have mostly gone ; the big houses are mostly pulled 
down; rows of streets lie to right and left, ugly with gray 
brick and mean design and monotonous uniformity. Claude 
strolled about these new streets, slowly and wearily. His first 
excitement was wearing off ; besides, he was feeling tired. Pres- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


301 


ently he took by accident a road which led him past the new 
houses and into the region of old Tottenham — such of it as still 
exists. He was in a lane with walls on both sides — they were old 
red-brick walls with stonecrop and wallflowers on top, but these 
details escaped him in the darkness ; beyond the walls were trees, 
and beyond the trees were gardens, and the night air was heavy 
with the scent of a thousand flowers — the flowers of early autumn 
when the mignonette is still sweet, and the honeysuckle and jas- 
mine still blossoming. The lane led him, he perceived, to the 
church, which stood, a dark mass with a black tower, outlined 
against the sky among the white tombstones. 

He opened the gate and stepped within the churchyard. 

Tottenham church has a very good churchyard, full of inter- 
esting monuments of unknown people, and in the daytime you 
might wander there for a long time and learn quantities of his- 
tory just hinted at in the bald, disjointed way common to tomb- 
stones. You might, I say, under happier conditions, but you 
cannot, because they have stuck up rows of spiky iron railings 
beside the path, so that no moralist, unless he have very long- 
legs, shall ever be permitted to get any good out of the churchyard 
at all. It is an abominable, unchristian custom. What should 
we say if the Catacombs of Rome, or the Cemetery of Arles, were 
to be closed forever, and so the messages and lessons of the dead 
to the living were to be read no longer ? What if they were to 
hang curtains before all the tablets in Westminster, and rub out 
the inscription of Eshmunazar ? This, however, if you come to 
think of it, is exactly what the bright intelligences of Tottenham 
have done for their folk. At Waltham Abbey, too, this same 
thing has been doney and at St. Giles’s in the City, and I dare say 
in hundreds of churchyards. There are, again, two splendid yew- 
trees in the churchyard which ought to be surrounded by benches 
for the old folk to sit upon in summer evenings ; but they are 
now within the spikes and there is no bench round either of them, 
and so another opportunity is lost until, in good time, there may 
haply come a vicar with a touch of poetry and sentiment, and a 
feeling for the dead ; and then the spikes will be taken away, 
and the benches will be put up, and the tombstones will resume 
their solemn lessons to the living. 

Claude was more desirous of resting than of reading the monu- 
ments ; it w^as too dark to read, and, besides, he was not in a 

U 


302 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


moralizing, but rather of an accusing and rebellious mood. He 
stepped over the spikes, however, being tall enough and long 
enough of limb, and, finding a flat stone, sat down upon it and 
tried to think connectedly, which he had not as yet been able to 
do. It is something in every case of trouble, just to put the 
facts plainly. Three or four hours ago, he explained to himself, 
as if there was somebody inside him who was very stupid, he 
had suddenly come into possession of the most undesirable thing 
in the whole world, a thing absolutely impossible to get rid of, 
or to forget, or ever to put away and hide — namely, a disgrace- 
ful and shameful father. Try to think, you of the majority, 
whose fathers have lived blameless lives and left an honorable 
record behind them — put it to yourselves — what it would have 
been to you, had they, like Claude’s father — you will find a diffi- 
culty in finishing the sentence. 

When your doctor discovers that you have got a disease which 
he will never be able to cure, which you will have to carry with 
you to the grave, a burden which will never fall off your shoulders, 
you presently, when the shock is over, fall to inquiring after the 
various methods employed by the faculty for alleviating the hor- 
rid thing, just as the man who has to carry a knapsack is always 
trying to adjust the confounded straps into the most comfortable 
position possible. Claude began already to adjust his straps. 
It was a horribly heavy burden which was laid upon his shoulders. 
It was a burden with which he could no longer venture among 
his friends ; it would render impossible for him the only life 
which he thought worth having — the life of culture among men 
and women of culture. It could not be hidden away or disguised ; 
it was like a humpback. How could such a burden be alleviated ? 
There seemed but one way. It was the way already adopted by 
Valentine. His father must be bribed into effacing himself. No 
one must be permitted to know of his existence or to see him ex- 
cept Claude himself. He must bear the burden alone ; he must 
keep the secret to himself. Perhaps when his father — he kept 
on saying “ my father ” to himself, in order to bring the thing 
home more completely — when his father quite understood that 
his only chance of getting money was to keep quiet and out of 
the way, he would do so. If he disobeyed, why then — Claude 
ground his teeth — then he might do his worst ; and then — poor 
Violet ! — poor Valentine ! He sprang to his feet in an agony of 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


303 


wrath and shame, for in such a case he could do nothing for them, 
nothing at all, hut sit down with them in sackcloth and ashes, and 
remember that this was only the first generation and that there 
were yet two or even three to follow, with the sins of their grand- 
father to drag them down as they strove to climb upwards. 

The annals of our ancestors are for the most part forgotten, 
so that it is only in great families, whose history is preserved 
and handed down to posterity, that the tragedies, the disgraces, 
and the shames are remembered. To do the great families jus- 
tice, they seem rather to rejoice in the desperate villainies of their 
ancestors. But the evil deeds of the rude forefathers are for 
the most part vanished into oblivion, no longer remembered, no 
more talked about by the second and the third generations, 
though they may, in their poverty and obscurity, be suffering 
for those sins. Who remembereth that the great-uncle of the 
family baker — himself a very worthy man — was hanged ? Who 
careth that the respectable family solicitor had a grandfather by 
the maternal side sent to Botany Bay? What difference does 
it make to, the vicar that his father’s sister — the thing having 
been carefully concealed — ran away with the groom ? All the'fee 
stories are clean forgotten and out of people’s minds ; so that 
the sins of the fathers do not seem always to pursue the genera- 
tions which come after. Yet there are some hereditary disgraces 
which nothing but the waters of Lethe can wash away. Where 
is that benevolent stream ? In what region, in what unknown 
corner of the earth does its current flow ? How shall we find it 
so that we may make that which hath been vanish away and be- 
come as if it had never been ? There is a way — religious men 
tell us that way — by which things may be forgiven ; but I have 
never yet heard any method by which they can be forgotten. 

I suppose it was somewhere about two o’clock in the morning 
when Claude sat down upon the tombstone, his mind torn by 
these and a thousand other thoughts, which took shape in the twi- 
light and flitted before his eyes like ghosts in the deep shadows 
of the place. The headstones became faces which mocked and 
jeered at him ; he saw the figure of himself wandering in the 
dark shadows with downcast eyes and bowed and shameful head ; 
the shades of Valentine and Violet fell at his feet, weeping and 
sobbing for shame and disgrace ; his brother Sam stood before 
him with clinched fist, grinding teeth, and helpless rage in his 


304 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


eyes ; Melenda turned away in humiliation from her friends and 
hid her proud face ; and his mother wept because the thing she 
had concealed so long from her children had come to light at 
last. The night was not dark, but there were black depths be- 
neath the trees and in the recesses of the church ; there was 
such a dim suggestion of light as is favorable for a procession 
of ghosts. Presently there arose a young moon in the east ; the 
sky was clear, and the air was quite still. The silence fell upon 
his heart, but it did not soothe him. The dead men lying around 
him tried to whisper comfort in his ear : “ We have lived ; we 
have suffered ; we are dead. Our suffering is over ; yet a little 
while and no shame or disgrace can touch you — your lot shall be 
with us.” Yet the words brought no consolation. Then the still, 
soft air of the night lay upon his cheek and murmured gently : 

Live out thy life. This thing can do thee no harm ; go on as 
if it had never been.” And again : “ Bear it alone and bear it 
with brave heart, for the sake of those who might be crushed 
beneath the burden.” But these words failed to comfort him. 
And again — we are a scoffing and an infidel generation ; but in 
all times of sickness, sorrow, or any kind of adversity, there are 
certain words which rise up in the mind of every Englishman, 
though he believe in nothing at all but his own infallibility. They 
come out of an old Book which it is a fashion with some to dis- 
honor, to neglect, and even to deride — so in Claude’s mind there 
arose and lingered certain words which need not be set down 
concerning strength and trust, and presently he lifted his head 
and saw the gray dawn spreading in the east, and heard the birds 
twitter in the trees around him. Then he got up — the air was 
cold — and he shivered. It was light enough now to see things 
clearly outlined in the chill morning light. He tried the handle 
of the door of the great south porch — by great good-fortune it 
was open. Within there is a bench on either side — he thought 
he would sit down there. But he tried the handle of the church- 
door. Wonderful accident ! That, too, was open, and he stepped 
within the church. It was fast growing lighter ; the painted win- 
dows — the lower windows are all painted in Tottenham church 
— were beginning to show a glow of color, and a pale light shone 
in the clerestory windows, making the bays and aisles and col- 
umns mysterious and ghostly. Then the windows grew brighter, 
and the colors warmer, and presently the east sprang suddenly 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


305 


into splendor when the sun rose and the colors fell upon pillar 
and on wall, painting in crimson, blue, and gold the figures of 
Ferdinando Heyborne and Richard Kandeler and Eliza his wife. 
With the daylight the ghosts and devils of the night fled shriek- 
ing, and Claude stood upright, facing the splendid sunshine, and 
remembered that he was a man, with a man’s work before him, 
and a man’s duty to bear, and his burden to endure, and his 
honor in his own hand, and that the past was dead. Wherefore 
— I do not explain the phenomenon, but I state it — while his 
strength and courage came back to him, and he felt once more 
the power of his will, and peace returned to his soul, his eyes 
overflowed with tears, and he sat dowm and hid his face in his 
hands, and then — he fell fast asleep. 

It was nearly eight o’clock when he awoke and went out of 
the church. The business of the day, so far as concerned the 
birds in the gardens round the churchyard, was already pretty 
well over, because the sun, who gets up about half -past five at 
this season of the year, was already nearly half-way towards high 
noon. It was too late, moreover, to see his brother, who would 
now be on his way to the workshop, or perhaps already derang- 
ing somebody’s pipes, laying the foundations for an attack of 
typhoid, or for a boiler explosion, or an overflow of the bath, or 
an escape of gas — for Joe w^as really clever in his own line. But 
that mattered nothing. Now, he was not going to tell Joe or 
any one else at all. It should be his own secret. 

“ I wish, however,” he said, “ that I had a clothes-brush. And 
my boots would be all the better for a little attention. I’ll go 
and see my mother.” 

She was already dressed and in her arm-chair. To his aston- 
ishment, Valentine was there too. The fire, was burning bright- 
ly, the kettle was singing, the cloth was spread, and she was mak- 
ing the tea, looking fresh and bright enough to raise the spirits 
of a man going in for a competitive examination. 

“ That is the step of my boy,” cried the old lady, while he was 
yet afar off. 

“ Claude !” cried Valentine. “ You here at this hour ?” 

Claude stooped and kissed his mother. 

“ Give him a kiss, Polly,” she said, in the quick, peremptory 
tone with which she ordered her daughter about. “ Can’t you 
kiss your own brother, child ?” 


306 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


Valentine blushed, but obeyed — that is to say, she offered her 
hand as a substitute for her cheek. 

“ Suppose,” said Claude, when he had paid this knightly hom- 
age — “ suppose I had got up early in order to walk here and 
have breakfast with you, mother? But how is it you are here 
too, Valentine ?” 

“ I stayed with mother all night because her nerves were a lit- 
tle shaken, and I did not like her to be alone.” 

“ We’re glad to see you, my dear. Polly, go and buy two or 
three eggs and a bit o’ bacon. The boy must ’be hungry. Have 
you got any money, child ? Now, run, my dear ; make haste.” 

Valentine nodded to Claude, and laughed, and ran upon her 
errand. 

“ She’s a real good girl, Claude,” said the old lady. “ That’s 
what she is, mind : there’s nobody like Polly. Don’t you let her 
be put upon by Melenda. She’s got a heart of gold, and she 
thinks of everything. Last night I had a dreadful fright — oh ! 
a most terrible fright, and it put me all of a shake — ” 

“ What was it, mother ?” 

“My dear, I thought I heard a footstep — it was a footstep 
that I knew, and the second time I heard it — the step of a dead 
man — your father, Claude. It was only a dream, I know ; be- 
cause Polly, she came in a minute or two afterwards, and she 
said there was nobody. But it gave me such a shake as I never 
had before ; I haven’t felt like myself ever since. But Polly, 
she don’t mind staying here.” 

“ What time was it, mother ?” 

“ In the evening, about eight o’clock. Polly stayed all night 
with me because I was afraid.” 

“ And you — you heard nothing more, did you ?” 

“ No — nothing more. It was only a dream, you see. But it 
gave me a terrible turn. When a person is blind, she feels these 
fancies more than most.” 

“ Don’t think any more about it,” said Claude. It must have 
been the step of his father ; but how was it that Valentine saw no 
one ? And how could his father have got his Temple address ? 

Then Valentine came back with her purchases. 

“ You don’t look well, Claude,” she said. “ You have dark 
rings round your eyes and you are pale. Have you been walking 
too far before breakfast ? or have you been working too hard ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 307 

“ I am very well — but I thought you were looking pale, Val- 
entine. There is nothing the matter, is there ?” 

“What should there be?” she answeredwith the approved evasion. 

Involuntarily they watched each other, both thinking of the 
dreadful secret they knew and would keep from each other. And 
once Claude met Valentine’s eyes, and he felt, wondering, that 
they were full of pity. Why did she pity him? Yet, if she 
knew — oh ! how greatly would she pity him ? He could not 
mistake that expression, which would be read and understood 
by the merest beginner in the art of thought-reading. Why did 
Valentine pity him? She knew nothing. 

“ Eat your egg while it’s hot, my dear,” said the old lady, 
pleased to have her boy with her. “ You were always a famous 
boy foi an egg. Polly, my dear, cut his bread-and-butter thick. 
And plenty of sugar in his tea. What a boy he used to be for 
sugar, to be sure ! Claude, it’s twelve years and more since you 
had your breakfast with your mother. If I could only see you 
— oh ! dear, dear — if I could only see you with my own eyes as 
I used to see you, eating hearty as you used to eat. I suppose 
you’ve grown out of bread and dripping — Polly, is the bacon 
kept hot for him ? Don’t let him say we sent him away hungry. 
I hope the loaf is to your liking, my boy ! I wish we had some jam 
for him. Cut him a crusty bit, Polly. He used to like the crust. 
You and me can eat the crumb ” — and so on, because her boy was 
at breakfast with her ; and because, as women use, she made a 
king of him, and of herself and her daughter she made his slaves. 

Claude ate and drank, being hungry after his night in the open, 
and he tried to laugh and joke. Between him and Valentine — 
each saw it and thought it hidden from the other — stood the 
spectre of a gray-headed man, with cunning eyes and smooth 
face, holding out his hands for more, and threatening to turn all 
their innocent joy into mourning and all their pride into shame I 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE LADY WITH THE PARASOL. 

There are some institutions, some kinds of wickedness, some 
classes of men, some modes of suffering, which seem, to people 


308 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


of the gentle life, outside the possibility of any connection with 
themselves. They belong to another kind of creature, only out- 
wardly resembling them. The prison, for example, is an insti- 
tution only known to most of us by hearsay : those kinds of sin 
which bring upon us the man in blue are such as we think we 
shall never commit — the disgrace, shame, and remorse of crime 
are among the emotions which we shall never feel. This way 
of looking at life is, of course, misleading, because everything 
becomes possible when one is tempted. 

Valentine had learned already that the girl Polly, whom she 
personated, was the daughter of a dead convict : she learned now 
that the dead had returned to life, and was prepared to heap coals 
of unspeakable disgrace upon everybody connected with him, un- 
less she could stave him off. And in Ivy Lane, under the same 
roof, were the man’s daughter and the man’s chief victim ; for 
there could not be, even in Mr. Carey’s remarkable career, an- 
other instance of wickedness quite so bad as the case of Mr. 
Lane ; and every night, also in Ivy Lane, sharing the same bed 
with his own daughter, was his victim’s daughter. There can- 
not possibly be any misfortune much worse to bear than a dis- 
graceful father. A foolish father, a spendthrift father, a miser, 
a brute, an evil liver, a selfish father — these are common, and 
have often to be endured. But to have such a father as James 
Carey, Prince of Burglars, that is indeed a cross not often laid 
upon suffering humanity. To be sure he was not Valentine’s 
father ; but she felt as if, but for the accident of Violet being 
Polly, he might have been. When she went home in the morn- 
ing the little room upon which this evil spirit might at any time 
intrude his detestable presence if he found out the place, seemed 
like an oasis of rest, with its flowers and pictures. Lotty was 
lying on the bed, now her permanent abode ; her eyes were 
closed, but she was not sleeping, and she welcomed Valentine’s 
return with a smile of affection which went straight to her heart, 
and filled her eyes with tears. When one is in great trouble 
even a little thing will sometimes do this. 

“ My dear,” Valentine said, kissing her, “ have you had a good 
night ? I was obliged to stay at Tottenham.” 

“ I am always having bad nights now. Melenda’s been sitting up 
with me — I’ve been dreadful bad — I’m glad it wasn’t you again.” 

“ But Melenda was working all day — she must not sit up all night,” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


309 


“ She liked doing it — oh ! Valentine ” — Lotty held out her thin 
hand to take Valentine’s — “ she is always half starved — we were 
all half starved till you came — and now work is slack : and what 
will she do, poor thing ? And she’s harder and more independent 
than ever !” 

“ What can I do for her ?” She thought of a danger almost 
worse than starvation. “ Lotty, we are all in terrible trouble.” 

“ Not you, Valentine — you haven’t got any trouble, have you ?” 

Yes, I have, Lotty — but don’t talk about it.” 

“ And I’m such a burden to you ! Oh ! if I could get better. 
I’ll show you, and Melenda too, as soon as I get better.” 

“ Yes, dear — don’t think of yourself as a burden, Lotty. The 
trouble has nothing to do with money.” 

“ Melenda’s jealous,” Lotty went on. “ But she’s not so jealous 
as she was — she doesn’t sniff any more when she looks at your 
pretty things. In the night, when she thought I was asleep, she 
began to cry — she kept on crying. Do you think she cried about 
the work being slack ? I never saw her cry before, except when 
she was in a rage !” 

Valentine turned her face away. There was reason enough 
for Melenda’s crying in Lotty’s hollow cheeks and lustrous eyes, 
in her weakness and her bad nights. 

It was the doctor’s morning. He called, and gave his patient 
a few directions. Then Valentine followed him down the stairs. 
He replied to the unspoken questions which he read in her eyes : 

“ I think, exactly and truthfully, that she may last perhaps till 
the spring. That’s all there is to think.” 

“ Poor Lotty !” 

“ When the weather gets chilly you might send her to Ventnor 
or somewhere, if she can travel, and so prolong her life a little — 
it’s my business to prolong life. But” — he pointed to the di- 
rection of Melenda’s room — “ is that kind of thing worth living 
for ? Perhaps there is something beyond, and perhaps there isn’t. 
I’d rather take my chances on the other side, if I were Lotty, 
than stay here. Not that she will be asked — poor girl ! — which 
she’d rather have.” 

She is happier now ; she seems to forget the past miseries. 
It is something for her to have sufficient food and to rest.” 

“ And when you go away, what is to prevent all the miseries 
coming back 2” 


310 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


The past shall never return, for her or for the others, doctor, 
if I can help it. We may be powerless against the system which 
makes slaves of these girls, but we can do something for one here 
and there !” 

“ I believe you are the Countess of Monte Cristo ! I hear the 
same story about you wherever I go. I wonder if your ladyship 
keeps millions in the cupboard ?” 

“ No ; my millions are not there.” 

Has your ladyship a sister called Melenda ?” 

“ Perhaps.” 

“You are not well this morning,” said the doctor, changing 
his tone ; “ you’ve got a black ring round your eyes, and your 
cheeks are white. What’s the matter with you ?” 

“ I am in great trouble,” said Valentine, “ but I cannot tell 
you what it is.” 

“ Well — anyhow, don’t vex your soul about the women. We’ll 
get the Labor League some day and work wonders ; see if we 
don’t. The men shall rule it, though — it’s good for women to 
be ruled by men.” 

Then Valentine sat down and waited, curious to learn what 
the convict would do next. 

The convict behaved exactly as might have been expected of 
him, only with greater promptitude, for the very next day Val- 
entine got a letter from him, addressed to the almshouse, stating 
that, by a most unfortunate accident, he had lost the sovereign 
she had given him and was now penniless, but full of trust that 
his daughter would see her repentant father through. 

She made no reply to this letter. Two days afterwards there 
came another. A most magnificent chance occurred, he said, by 
which, for thirty pounds down, he could secure a 'tobacconist’s 
shop, a going concern, with a connection in the newspaper line. 
Only thirty pounds wanted to establish himself in a Christian 
way for life ! He would give up her allowance altogether in con- 
sideration of the thirty pounds. 

Valentine read this letter carefully. The man was certainly 
feeling his way. As for giving him the money, that, of course, 
was out of the question. Her only chance with him, she thought, ^ 
was to make him understand clearly that he would get nothing 
if he did not comply with the conditions. She resolved on see- 
ing him again, though with misgivings. She wrote to him. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


311 


therefore, telling him to meet her in the gardens at the back of 
St. Luke’s, on Saturday morning at twelve. 

Mr. Carey kept the appointment. He came, however, half an 
hour before the time, and he was accompanied by a girl. She 
was dressed soberly and respectably. She wore a thick veil and 
carried a parasol with a black lace fringe — one of those instru- 
ments by means of which ladies can observe others without being 
themselves observed. They are adapted for modest curiosity, 
or for curious modesty, or for anything in the detective and se- 
cret-search line. 

“ She isn’t come,” said the man, looking about. “ Very well, 
then, she’ll come directly. All you’ve got to do is to sit here 
and wait till she goes out. Then you get up and follow her, and 
find out where she lives, and come and tell me.” 

“ That’s right, daddy,” said the girl, grinning. “ It isn’t the 
first time I’ve done that ! Oh, isn’t it beautiful to see them walk 
right away, unsuspecting, and me on the other side of the road, 
quiet and takin’ no notice, and generally a good bit behind, till 
they get home ? And next morning some of us calls, and the 
game begins !” 

Never you mind about the next morning,” said Mr. Carey; 
‘‘that’s my lookout. You just find out where she lives — that’s 
what you’re paid to do ?” 

“Very well, daddy.” This girl will, no doubt, some day be 
taken on in the detective service ; but at present she is the con- 
fidential employee of a small, modest, and retiring syndicate, for 
whom she finds out all kinds of secrets connected with houses 
and their private interests ; shops, shopmen, and clerks, religious 
professors and their private characters, gambling and betting clubs 
and their associates. ’When7 after infinite pains, lies, pretences, 
and inventions, chiefly by the aid of this clever young lady, they 
have got possession of a secret, they begin to exploiter it for their 
own purposes; that is, they sell the secret or their own, silence 
and sometimes make considerable sums of money, and on the 
whole, when the young lady is active and has been fortunate, they 
do very well indeed. Sometimes, however, they get into prison. 

“Well, daddy,” said the girl, “I found out about the old 
woman’s sons for you, didn’t I ?” 

“ I don’t say you didn’t. You were paid for it handsome. 
But it’s been no use to me yet.” 


312 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Mr. Carey left her on the seat and began to walk up and down 
the asphalt walk, with one eye suspiciously turned upon the po- 
liceman, much as a partridge, even out of the season, may regard 
a man with a gun. 

Valentine arrived presently, only a few minutes late. Mr. Ca- 
rey perceived, from a certain look of contumacy in her eyes, that 
she was likely to give him trouble. He held out his hand, how- 
ever, in a fatherly and forgiving spirit. 

“ You have written to me,” she said, rudely refusing to take 
it ; “ you have written two letters to me. One contained a fabe- 
hood about losing the sovereign I gave you, the other also con- 
tained a falsehood about a shop.” 

“ No, gawspel truth— not a falsehood ; and it’s a most beau- 
tiful chance. I shall never get such a chance again. The shop 
is next door hut one to a chapel, too. Oh, how handy for the 
means of grace !” 

“ I told you the other evening, and I tell you again, that you 
will have no more money from me than the pound a week I have 
offered you ; and if you break my conditions, you will have noth- 
ing at all. Now do you understand ?” 

“ Well, my dear, I thought you’d say that. Most of ’em do, 
till they feel the screw a hit. Then they talk reason.” 

“ Nothing. That is all I have to say to you. Now you may go.” 

“ Look here, my girl,” he tried to bluster ; hut somehow the 
girl’s face, or the near presence of the policeman, abashed him, 
and he spoke in little more than a whisper. “ Look here — your 
father’s a ticket-o’-leave man, and your name isn’t Monument at 
all, but Carey ; and you’re the daughter of a convict and a bur- 
glar, and you’re ashamed of it. That’s what you are. Very 
well, then, it’s like this : yon’re ashamed of it more than a pound 
a week, and you’ve got to pay up accordingly.” 

“ You shall have nothing more.” 

“P’r’aps you can’t lay your hands on thirty pound all at 
once. Lor’, I don’t want to press you, and p’r’aps I can help you 
to get it off of somebody that has got it. There’s a lover or a 
husband about — oh, I know. And he mustn’t never know, must 
he ? Husbands and lovers mustn’t know about the ticket-o’-leave 
men, must they? P’r’aps you’re married and there’s babies. 
Very well, then, naturally you don’t want the babies never to 
learn about the great burglar, though p’r’aps when they’re old 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


313 


enough they may he glad to crack a crib and thankful of the 
chance. But there’s a prejudice against burglars, ain’t there ? 
You’d give a great deal not to have your father in your house, 
wouldn’t you ? Why, there, we’re agreed already.” 

“ 1 suppose I must hear what you have to say.” 

“ Why, of course you must. Very well, then.” He coughed, 
and looked at her with some hesitation, because he was wonder- 
ing how far he might go, and what figure he might name, and he 
considered her dress and external appearance carefully before he 
spoke. The gloves decided him, though perhaps the hoots helped. 
It is only the really prosperous who have both good boots and good 
gloves. Mr. Carey, an old student of human nature, remembered 
so much. “ I want more than thirty pound — I want a hundred — ” 

“ Do you ?” 

“A hundred pounds. I’m ready to take that money, partly 
in valuables and partly in gold — partly to-day and partly the day 
after to-morrow.” 

“ You must ask some one else for the money, then.” 

“ I shall ask my wife. At the almshouse.” 

“ You cowardly villain ! Then you will get nothing 1” 

“ I shall ask my sons then, one after the other. I know where 
they are, all of them.” 

Valentine changed color. The man had already found them 
out, then ! 

“ You see, my pretty,” he went on, with a mocking grin, “ your 
father isn’t quite such a fool as you thought him — not quite such 
a fool. And he’s been making a few inquiries. Joe works for 
a plumber, most respectable Joe is; and Sam’s a schoolmaster, 
highly thought of; and Claude’s in the Temple, where the law- 
yers live. As for you, my pretty, you — with your lover or your 
husband — I haven’t found out yet, because I haven’t tried. But 
I shall find out as soon as I do try. All of ’em will be delight- 
ed to see me, though they have cast off their father’s name, and 
I dare say your lover will be as pleased as Sam and Joe will be 
pleased when I show up.” 

The girl recovered her presence of mind. 

“ You will do just exactly as you please,” she said, quietly. 
“You have heard what I had to say.” 

“And you shall do just exactly as I please,” he replied, with 
a rough oath. “ A hundred pound. That’s my first and last 
14 


314 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


offer. I ask no more, and I take no less. I don’t ask you where 
the pound a week comes from, do I ? Very likely it’s the house- 
keeping money, or it may be out of the till. Who the devil 
cares where it comes from ?” 

She made no sign, standing with folded hands, and eyes which 
looked as if she had not heard. 

“It’s so easy done,” he went on. “It isn’t as if I wanted 
anything dangerous or difficult. I’ll take all the danger myself ! 
There’s lots of ways — there’s a check and a signature — I shouldn’t 
want any more than that. You get me a signed check, and I’ll 
alter the amount — I know how to take out the writin’ and put in 
fresh. There’s a door left unlocked at night p’r’aps — or there’s 
just the little straight tip where the valuables is kept ; or maybe 
there’s the least bit of help when the till’s got to be cleared ! 
Mind you, my dear, I don’t value no lock nor bolt ever invented, 
not a brass farthing. You needn’t be a bit afraid of me — not 
one bit. Money or money’s value — it’s all the same to me. Just 
turn things over in your mind, Marla, my dear, and you’ll come 
to reason, I’m sure.” 

“ Oh 1” said Valentine, “ surely this man is the most wicked 
wretch in the world I” Nothing ever astonished Mr. Carey more 
than his daughter’s plainness of speech. She had even boxed his 
ears ; and he shrank from her in cowardly terror lest she might do 
it again. Now, it is not often that a man can boast of a daughter 
who has both boxed his ears and called him names. Such daugh- 
ters are rare. Even King Lear’s elder daughters did not reach 
this level. 

“ Now,” she said, facing him with a resolution which he ad- 
mired, “ listen to me again. I will give you no money except this 
pound a week. Remember,that as for getting you a hundred pounds 
— ^begging it, borrowing it, or stealing it — I will have nothing to 
do with it. And if you dare to show yourself to my mother or 
my brothers, you shall have nothing more from me at all. Do 
you hear? Nothing! And this I solemnly swear to you, be- 
cause I suppose you will not believe a simple promise.” 

His eyes dropped, and he made no answer. Then he began to 
protest that he wanted nothing but an honest livelihood, and to 
show his repentance, throwing in the Scripture phrases which 
reeked so frightfully of the prison, when she interrupted him again : 

“ There is one thing I might do for you.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


315 


‘‘ What is that ?” 

I might send some one to you who would make you an offer — ” 

“ What kind of offer ?” 

“ So much a week if you would go abroad and stay there.” 

“ What ! And leave London, when I have only just come out?” 

“ Yes, you wmuld have to leave England. It would be a liberal 
offer.” 

“ Leave England ? And at my age ? Never !” 

“You have heard what I had to say. Now go. Leave me 
here. Take you detestable presence out of my sight !” 

Mr. Carey obeyed, with mental reservations about the future 
and the revenge he would take on this unnatural child. He had 
yet, however, to discover where and how she lived, and why she 
was so anxious to keep the knowledge of his existence from her 
brothers. 

As for Yalentine, she felt inclined to communicate to the police- 
man in the gardens certain new ideas as regards the penal system. 
It ought to include, she would have told him, provision for the in- 
carceration of such a man as this for life. He should be allowed 
such special luxuries as tobacco, rations of drink, and permission 
to keep his gas alight till — say ten o’clock at night. But he 
should never be allowed to go back to the world for a single day. 
The place of his incarceration need not be called a prison, per- 
haps, but a Penitents’ Ketreat, or some such name, so as to soften 
the apparent cruelty of the sentence. She did not, however, com- 
municate these ideas to the policeman ; but she left the garden 
and walked away. The girl with the parasol and the black fringe 
round it got up from the seat and went out after her slowly. 
The policeman looked on, and noted the circumstance. First, 
one girl comes to the garden with a man. Then another girl 
comes. Man converses with that girl. First girl waits. Then 
second girl goes away alone. First girl follows second. There 
was a little game up. But he was on duty in the garden, and 
he could not follow and observe. 

Yalentine was a very easy person to follow and watch, because 
she walked quickly, looked neither to the right nor to the left, 
and was so absorbed in her own thoughts that the woman might 
have walked at her very elbow without attracting her suspicions. 

She crossed the City Road and walked along the street until she 
came to Hoxton Street, when she turned to the left. The girl 


316 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


followed. Valentine went on nearly to tbe end of the street, when 
- she turned into a mean and shabby street. The girl stood at the 
corner and watched. There was a public-house in the street. Per- 
haps she was gbing there, but she was not. She entered a house 
exactly opposite the public-house. The spy stood at the corner, 
with one eye on the house, and waited, looking at the shop-win- 
dows for a few minutes. She could not be living there — that 
was absurd. Young ladies cannot live in such a place. Presently, 
however, as she did not come out, the spy turned into the street, 
and as there was no one about of whom she could ask any ques- 
tions, she went into the public-house and “ took ” something. 

“ Isn’t there a young lady,” she asked the potman, “ as comes 
and goes in the house opposite ?” 

“ There is just,” replied the young man, who had taste. “ And 
what do you want with her ? Because, you see, if you mean any 
harm to her, you’d best clear out of Ivy Lane.” 

“ I mean harm ? Why, bless the man, I worships the ground 
she treads on. A sweet lady ! Where does she live when she’s 
at home ?” 

“ Why, there.” 

“ Oh I Does her husband work, then ?” 

‘‘ Her husband ? She ain’t got no husband !” 

“ Oh ! Then how does she live ?” 

“ Go and ask her yourself,” he replied. 

The girl looked into the house. It was only a mean and shab- 
by tenement-house ; she belonged, then, to poor people. What 
was the little game of the old man — her new friend — with this 
young person ? 

But that was no concern of hers. It was something vile and 
wicked, of course, because she knew all her companions were vile 
and wicked. She went away, therefore, and faithfully narrated 
what she had observed. 

Mr. Carey was greatly puzzled at this unexpected discovery. 

His daughter, who permitted herself such airs, and talked as if 
she had thousands, and looked like a lady in every particular, 
w^earing the most beautiful boots and gloves, actually lived in a 
mean street of Hoxton, the meanest and also the most virtuous 
part of all London — a place in which he should be ashamed to 
be seen. And she lived in a single room, with those gloves and 
those boots. AVhat could this mean ? 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


317 


“ Pity, my dear,” lie said, “ that you couldn’t find out how 
she makes her money. For money there is.” 

“ If you’d told me what you wanted, and why you wanted it, I 
might have found more. All you said was, ‘ Find out where she 
lives.’ Well, I have found out, and a potboy who told me nearly 
bit my head off for asking about her.” 

“ What is she, then ?” 

“ Well, I think she’s one of them which go about with Bibles, 
and fake up excuses for making the people virtuous. There’s 
no end to their dodges. They’re getting as artful as you and me, 
pretty well. One of ’em collects rents in a court close by here. 
It’s an Irish court too. But, bless you, she ain’t afraid, and 
they won’t harm her. Well, I s’pose that young lady is up to 
some game of that sort, daddy. And what game you are up to 
with her I should like to know.” 

Mr. Carey shook his head. He was conscious of so heartfelt 
a dislike to all forms of religion, virtue, or morality, that he 
thought it must have been transmitted to his descendants. Be- 
sides, a woman to do this must be a lady to begin with, and his 
daughter Marla was only the daughter of a washerwoman. I 
am sorry to say that he placed a bad construction on the matter, 
and concluded that she was engaged, for purposes of her own, 
in some genteel game which might be spoiled by the discovery 
of her father’s profession and of his return to its active exercise. 
“ But,” he murmured, “ I’ll have that hundred pound yet.” 


CHAPTER XXL 

A FRIENDLY FATHER. 

For a whole fortnight Mr. Carey refrained from molesting 
either of his children, graciously consenting to receive twenty 
shillings a week from one and thirty shillings from the other. 
The reason for this modest retirement and simple content was 
simply that as yet he had made few friends — it takes time for 
a professional gentleman of distinction to find out congenial 
spirits of his own lofty level — and therefore he had met with 
no temptation for the display of that hospitality which formerly 
was one of his most delightful qualities. Besides, he had not 

X 


318 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


yet overcome tlie strangeness of the world, which had changed 
a good deal during his twenty years of seclusion, even to the 
language of the fraternity, and. this, I understand, undergoes a 
complete change in twenty years. Book language lasts, it is 
true, but the slang of rogues, like the dialect of a savage tribe, 
is always changing from generation to generation. Mr. Carey 
found that the old patter, that spoken by himself in the early 
sixties, was unknown, and even provoked laughter among the 
new generation; and it distressed him that he was completely 
ignorant of the new idioms, and was slow to understand the 
back slang, the rhyming slang, and the so-called theatrical slang 
which are now current in Thieves’ Land. Consequently, he sat 
apart and stayed his soul with flagons, tobacco, and books. Fifty 
shillings a week was enough for his simple wants. Therefore it 
was in pure devilry and with the deliberate intention of vexing 
and shaming his son Claude that he paid a second visit to the 
Temple. The door was shut; nevertheless, Mr. Carey opened 
it with the help of a simple instrument which he always carried 
about him. When Claude returned about midnight he heard, 
while yet upon the stairs, the scraping, not unskilful, of a Addle. 
Such a sound is strange in King’s Bench Walk. Outside the 
door he recognized that the Addle was being played in his own 
chambers, and on opening the door he discovered that his father 
was the musician. He was sitting in a chair playing merrily ; in 
his mouth was a short pipe ; a bottle of wine, half finished, and 
a glass stood on the table. 

“ Glad to see me, Claude ?” he asked, nodding and grinning. 
‘‘ I thought you would be, so I came round. It’s a goodish step 
from Whitechapel, isn’t it ? I told you I should step in some- 
times. Well, you were out, so I let myself in. It’s not a bit of 
good locking a door to keep me out, bless you. Lord, there isn’t 
a lock in the whole country that will keep me out, and so, my 
son, I’ve been making myself comfortable.” 

Claude groaned, and his father, with a smile of satisfaction 
and a brightened eye, for the sight of his son’s disgust and hu- 
miliation affected him with a singular joy, went on with his con- 
versation, which was a monologue. 

“ I picked up this fiddle on my way — bought it in Hounds- 
ditch for a sov, which you’ll have to hand over, my dear boy. 
Have you got the money about you, or shall I put one of these 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


319 


pretty mugs up the spout ? I suppose they’re real silver. Thank 
you ! It is a very good fiddle for the money, but my hand is a 
little out. There’s no fiddling allowed in the jug. I’ll play you 
something, Claude.” He played correctly and with some feeling 
and an old-fashioned lingering among the notes, as if he loved 
them every one, Balfe’s air “ Then you’ll remember me.” After 
this he played “ My pretty Jane,” and “ Tom Bowling.” 

“ There, boy,” he said, laying down the fiddle, “ can you do 
that ? Not you. Can you take the fiddle, and play a hornpipe, 
and make the boys dance whether they want to or not, and draw 
their hearts out of the women, and the tears from their eyes ? 
That’s what I could do when I was a young man. As for the 
girls, a man who can fiddle like me can do what he likes. Ah, 
Lord ! To think of the old days ! Can you do it ? Not you. 
What can you do ? How do you live, I say ? What is your lay, 
now ? Where do you find the money for all this ?” 

Claude made no reply. 

Then the man filled and lit his pipe, and drank two more 
glasses of wine. It was Burgundy, and he seemed to appreciate 
it. But the wine did not warm his heart, apparently, for his 
eyes had a devilish look in them as they fell upon Claude’s face 
— the look of one who considers evil day and night — ^the look of 
one who took pleasure in contemplating his victim’s shame, and 
revenged himself at the same time for the loathing of his own 
presence. He already hated his son, who showed so clearly the 
humiliation caused by his return, and yet bore with him, and did 
not, as he might have done, shove him violently down the stairs. 
He hated him, and he rejoiced in his power of humiliating and 
disgusting him more and more. 

“ Look ye, Claude,” he said, with a full, round, and sonorous 
oath ; “ you may keep your trade to yourself, if you please ; 
you’re afraid of my getting a hand in it, I suppose. But you 
won’t keep your old father out of your rooms ; I shall come here 
for company and for drink — I shall come here whenever I choose. 
It’s rather lonely where I have got my pitch, and they’re a low lot 
about now, compared with the old pals, and there’s not many of 
the new men that I care to know. Why, there was a man last 
night pretended never to have heard of the great Jim Carey. 
The profession has gone down ; it’s gone very low indeed. Any 
man calls himself a burglar when he’s once learned to crack a 


320 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


crib, and to carry a revolver in case he’s heard upon the stairs. 
As if I ever wanted pistols ! — as if I was ever heard ! — as if any- 
body ever heard or caught me in a house ! Ah ! Claude, it 
was a great misfortune for you when your father was lagged. 
You’ll never understand with them prejudices of yours what a 
misfortune it was. You’ve got a quick eye, and a light tread, 
and clean fingers. You would have equalled your father almost; 
you couldn’t surpass him. And I’d always made up my mind 
what to do with you. And now it’s come to this — a black coat 
and a tall hat — talk like a swell — lodgings among the lawyers — 
actually among the lawyers — my own son — Jim Carey’s son — 
among the lawyers ! — and something genteel in the book-making 
line. Well, as I was saying — this bottle’s ’most empty ; go and 
get me another. It’s cool stuff, and carries a man along better 
than brandy. As I was saying, the profession is clean ruined 
by revolvers ; it’s getting low ; there’s no pride in a neat job. 
But there, nothing good ever came from America yet. I am get- 
ting old now, and I doubt if I shall ever do much more, my boy ; 
but it’s heart-breaking to find yourself forgotten after all that’s 
been done. As for work, why should I work any more, when 
I’ve a beautiful, dutiful, affectionate son to keep me, not to speak 
of a wife and two daughters, and two other sons, every one of 
whom desires nothing so much as to welcome back the fond 
father they have lost. He is a ticket-o’-leave man ; he is repent- 
ant, and is open to the tender infiuences of awakening grace, and 
understands at last the Christian virtues, and has cast off the 
works of darkness. The good chaplain says so, and the chaplain 
ought to know, because he’s always converting such a lot of 
wicked sinners, and a giving of ’em the best of characters. It’s 
a contrite spirit — oh ! — and a broken heart ?” 

“ For Heaven’s sake,” said Claude, “ it is past midnight, drink 
what you want and go.” 

“ I shall go when I please. Now, about this family of mine. 
Thirty bob isn’t enough, my son !’^ 

“ I shall give you no more.” 

“ Very well, then, I shall think about trying the rest of them. 
Perhaps altogether they would make it forty. As for the girl 
who lives in Ivy Lane, Hoxton ” — Claude started — “ dressed like 
a lady, though where she gets her money from is what I do not 
yet know — ” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


321 


“ Who told you about her ?” 

“ Never you mind. Who told me about you, and about your 
mother, and about Sam and Joe ? I know all about the family ; 
there’s Joe — be isn’t worth calling on, because he’s only a work- 
ing-man with a family of eight. Sam, again, he’s only a poor, 
miserable schoolmaster.” (It must be remembered that Mr. 
Carey went into his hermitage before the passing of the Element- 
ary Education Act, and, therefore, did not appreciate the present 
position of the schoolmaster.) “ He’s got the parson over his 
head to bully him, and make him go to church and look humble. 
He’s got nothing but his miserable salary. There’s no use in 
worrying Sam. And your mother’s in an almshouse and blind. 
If I go to see her perhaps they’ll send her away out of the place, 
’cos she isn’t a widow, and make me keep her. I don’t want to 
keep her. And there’s the other girl — Melenda — and as yet I 
don’t know where Melenda is. So you see, Claude, there’s only 
you and your sister Marla. One of you two I must see sometimes, 
and I shall. Which shall it be ? All I ask, Claude, is — which 
shall it be — you or her ? Come, now.” 

“If you thrust yourself on her” — -it was clearly Valentine of 
whom his father spoke — “ I swear that I will stop my money 
altogether, and you can do what you please.” 

“ Don’t you think it just possible, my dear son, that your sis- 
ter Marla has got friends who would rather not know about her 
father ? Don’t you think she would come down as handsome as 
you’ve done — you and your thirty bob ! — just to keep these friends 
from knowing ? Therefore, Claude, which of them is it to be ?” 

“ It seems as if I can’t keep you out of my chambers if I tried ?” 

“ No, my boy — you can’t. Take your oath of that.” He took 
his two or three times over, with a glass of Burgundy to each, 
just by way of setting an example. 

“But if you force yourself on Val — on your daughter, I shall 
do my very best to dissuade her from giving you anything.” 

“Thank ye. You’re a dutiful boy, ain’t you? And suppose 
I force myself upon both of you ?” 

Claude made no reply at all. 

“ Eh 1” he repeated ; “ suppose I force myself upon both of 
you ?” 

“Then,” Claude replied, “there will be only one thing for us 
to do. My sisters and I will all go away — out of the. country — 
14 ^ 


322 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


some where — anywhere, out of your reach. Sam and Joe shall 
have the task of protecting my mother. You may be very cer- 
tain,” he added, grimly, “ of the reception you will get from both 
Joe and Sam.” 

“ Nice hoys, both,” said their father. “ They won’t turn up 
their noses as if they were gentlemen. A pretty kind of flash 
gentleman you are !” 

“ Very nice boys they will he,” said Claude, “ when they hear 
who you are and what you want. They will astonish you by 
their nice behavior. I fancy I see Sam before he flings you 
into the gutter for pretending to he his father, the honest lock- 
smith. Why ! we might all pretend that you are an impostor. 
I wish I had begun that way !” 

“ No, you don’t, Claude.” But he looked uneasy. Suppose 
these sons of his should all pretend not to believe in him, there 
might he considerable trouble and difficulty before him. “ Don’t 
think of that.” 

“ Yes, I wish I could see Sam’s face when you go to him. Go 
to him, by all means. Or go to Joe, and then you will And out 
how dutiful your sons can be, and how deeply your eldest son 
respects and loves your memory.” 

“ You can talk, young ’un, if you can do nothing else. So 
can I. Never mind Sam and Joe ; you and me will do. I will 
stick to you, my boy — ” 

“ As the leprosy stuck to Naaman — ” 

“Quite right, Claude — always quote the Scriptures. Didn’t 
Joe never tell you about me ? Joe was — how old was Joe when 
I was last lagged ? He was sixteen. Oh ! Jo'e knows all about 
it. I saw him in court when I w^as tried. It was a beautiful 
trial, and it would have done your heart good to hear how my 
counsel bowled ’em down, one after the other. x\t one time I 
thought I should have got off altogether. But it wasn’t to be. 
There was a providence in it, as our chaplain said. It brought 
me to a knowledge of the truth. Be not, then, ashamed of me, 
a prisoner!” The man displayed a horrid aptitude in quoting 
the book most read in prison. He took the more pleasure in it 
because it caused such peculiar pain and disgust to his son. 
For this reason the historian passes over most of these flowers 
of speech. 

“Joe,” said Claude, “ thought so highly of your profession 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


323 


and your career that he concealed everything from us, and hade 
us, on the other hand, be proud of our dead father — he said you 
were dead, because he wished and hoped that you were dead. We 
were to be proud of our father, on account of his character for 
honesty and straightforwardness. His character ! Good heavens !” 

Mr. Carey laughed ; but his eyes looked more wicked. 

“ That was not well done of Joe. When I quarrel with you, 
Claude, I shall pay Joe out for that. I shall go to Joe’s house 
and introduce myself to his wife and children and shall tell them 
the whole story. It will please Joe when he comes home in the 
evening, won’t it ?” 

Claude said nothing. 

“ And it will please you, my son, when I tell you that I have 
already begun practice again. Yes, in a small way — not in a low 
and mean way, mind you, but in a small way only. I knock at 
the front door and tell the maid that the back bedroom is afire. 
She rushes up-stairs, and I then step in and help myself. Twice 
to-day I did that trick.” 

“ Oh !” 

“ Then I got a book and a pencil, and I pretended to be the 
Gas Company’s man, and went down-stairs to examine the meter.” 

“ For Heaven’s sake, stop !” 

“ These rooms would make a beautiful fence. I’ll bring the 
things here, Claude.” 

“You shall not.” Claude’s eyes showed this man that he had 
gone too far. He laughed, and took some more drink. 

“ You’re capital company, Claude, if you’d drink more. That’s 
the pity of it, you can’t drink. Sit down, my boy, and let us 
drink together.” 

“ Drink together ?” 

“ If you won’t drink, then, and if you won’t smoke, you’ll just 
have to listen.” 

This ghastly night wore itself out at last. The man drank, 
smoked, and talked. He talked with extraordinary volubility. 
He seemed perfectly careless whether Claude were listening or 
not. It was sufilcient for him that he was awake. Hp talked, 
with deliberate design, on all those topics which he knew would 
most humiliate his son ; of his crimes, bold and successful ; of 
the changes and chances of his profession, which were constant- 
ly landing him in prison ; of his last burglary, when he made 


324 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


a splendidly daring attempt at a great lady’s jewels, and would 
have got them had it not been for a lout of a country policeman, 
who accidentally stopped him, and whom he very nearly killed 
in the fight which followed ; of his trial for burglary and violence 
and his long sentence; of his prison life, and his dodges with 
the doctor and the chaplain. 

Claude stood on the hearthrug, without replying. The man 
talked on for several hours, during which Claude endured an 
agony. The clock struck four. Then the man rose slowly. The 
drink he had consumed seemed to have made no impression 
whatever upon him ; he was not “ disguised,” his speech was 
clear, his bearing steady. But he looked more wicked, as if the 
wine had brought out upon his forehead with greater clearness 
the name of the beast or the number of his name. 

“I shall go to sleep,” he said. “You are capital company, 
Claude, my dear boy. I knew you would be. I shall come very 
often.” The bedroom door was open. He stepped inside, threw 
himself upon the bed, without any preliminary undressing, and 
fell asleep in a moment. 

Claude sat down with a sigh of relief. But he was too tired 
for any further load of shame, and he fell asleep in the chair. 

When he awoke it was nine o’clock, and his laundress was in 
the room. He remembered his guest of the night, and hastened 
to look into the bedroom. But the man was gone. He had 
taken his fiddle with him. 

“ Valentine,” said Claude, later in the day, “I have something 
to tell you.” 

“You have had something to tell me for the last fortnight. 
Are you going to tell it now ? What is it, Claude ?” She laid 
her hand on his arm, and looked into his face with the sisterly 
affection which was not counterfeited. “ Do you think we do not 
take notice when , you look ill and worried ? What is it, Claude ?” 

“Have I looked worried?” 

“ You poor boy ! 'There has been a line an inch deep across 
your forehead, and your eyes have had a distressed look, as if 
there was something you could not understand.” 

“ I don’t understand it, Valentine. It is a part of the mystery 
of evil. But you — are you worried, too ? Life here is too much 
for you. I wish to Heaven the middle of October was come.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


325 


“ I am always troubled about the girls,” she replied, menda- 
ciously. “But I am very well. Tell me something of your 
own trouble.” 

“I cannot, Valentine. Some day, perhaps, but not yet. I 
am a coward, and I am afraid to tell you. What I have to say 
now is, that certain things have come to my knowledge within 
the last week or two which have made me realize, in quite a new 
sense, how I belong to the very lowest of the people.” 

“Why, Claude, you have found some mare’s-nest!” She 
laughed, but she felt uneasy. Could he have learned the truth ? 
“ You have discovered, perhaps, that you have cousins very poor. 
What does that matter ?” 

“ It is not their poverty ” — and then she knew that he must 
have learned the story of his father’s life. Who could have told 
him ? Not the old lady ! Was it Joe? Why had Joe told him ? 

“ It is not their poverty, Valentine. I have only just learned 
from what dregs — from what unspeakable depths — I have been 
rescued — all of us have been rescued — you with us, if you were 
Polly.” 

“ Oh, Claude, do not talk like that ! Dregs — depths — why, 
these things are beneath your feet 1 What can it matter, now, 
what your relations were ? You cannot be ashamed of what 
they are 1” 

“ No ; but of what some of them were. Would it not matter 
if some of them were — criminals, Valentine ?” 

“ No, Claude,” she replied, stoutly, “ not even then !” 

“ Nay,” said Claude, sadly, “ it would matter a great deal. Such 
a thing as that would lay upon me a new obligation. I should 
have to atone and to make such reparation as may be in my 
power. You asked me once if I was ready to give all my life, 
if it were called for, to the work we have attempted. Why, 
Valentine, it is called for ! The old life — the life I used to long 
for — the life of honorable work and distinction — I need make 
no further question about giving it up ; it has already become 
impossible for me. It is not any longer a question of choice. Do 
not ask me why ; but I can never again even sit down with the 
men who have been my friends. I must leave the Temple. I 
shall come to live here. Oh 1 I will hide nothing 1 If people 
say, ‘ There goes the son of a — of a — ’ ” 

“ Of a locksmith, Claude,” Valentine interrupted, quickly ; 


326 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


remember what Joe told you. Remember what Sam and Me^ 
lenda believe. Think, if not of yourself, of Violet and of me.” 

She knew now — she was quite certain — that, in some way or 
other, Claude had discovered something, if not all, of the truth. 

“ I do think of Violet and of you,” he replied ; “ Heaven knows 
that. K it were only myself concerned, I could bear it lightly. 
But suppose Violet should find it out ? And how am I to keep 
the truth from her ?” 

“ I believe,” said Valentine, wise with the wisdom of books, 
“ that nothing is ever so bad as it seems to the imagination be- 
forehand. Therefore, I dare say Violet and I will be able to 
bear it, whatever it is. Women are really much stronger than 
men, in many ways, though you are so conceited over your su- 
perior intelligence !” 

“ You do not ask me what it is that I would conceal.” 

“ No ; I am contented to wait. Meantime, Claude, conceal 
nothing if you please. I do not ask you to conceal things ; but 
parade nothing. My poor boy ! Yet, if this trouble should give 
us a stronger champion, we ought to be glad that it has come 
upon us. Clear up that clouded brow, Claude. Let us see the 
old light in your eyes.” 


CHAPTER XXH. 

THE DOCTOR SPEAKS. 

“ The doctor is in love with you.” 

This information was conveyed by no higher an authority than 
the ragged old man below ; but it is information of a kind which 
is not readily forgotten, even though — as the newspapers in the 
last century used to say of the King of Sweden’s movements — 
it wants confirmation. It is of the kind which makes a girl 
pensive. Whatever the answer she intends to give when the 
question shall be put to her, the knowledge that it will be put, 
and probably very soon, greatly raises the aspirant in the young 
lady’s esteem. It makes him interesting; it also makes her 
expectant and watchful. 

Valentine remarked, first of all, that the doctor attended his 
patient with a regularity amounting to zeal ; this in itself could 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


327 


not fairiy be considered a symptom. But he stayed longer than 
was necessary, and he always made his visit the occasion of con- 
versation with herself. This, again, taken by itself, is not a symp- 
tom, because Valentine was the only young lady living within 
the boundaries of the doctor’s round ; in fact, the only lady he 
had ever known in all his life, and she was without doubt a very 
pleasing young lady, and it was natural that he should like to 
talk to her ; oi^e would not wish to draw conclusions of love 
from mere attraction. Presently, however, she became aware of 
a change in his talk ; he began to speak of himself. Now this, 
as everybody knows, is an infallible symptom ; he told her of 
his own position, his prospects, his history, and his opinions. 
He wanted, quite naturally, because he was so much interested 
in her, to interest her in himself. So far he succeeded, because 
he really was an interesting man. None of the physicians in the 
West End whom she had met were at all like this young physi- 
cian of Hoxton. 

“ Of course,” he said, one day, “ I don’t pretend to be a gen- 
tleman ; don’t think that — I’ve got nothing to do with gentility, 
and I don’t know the manners of society. I am just a Mile- 
Ender — the old man keeps a shop there, and I could have be- 
come his partner if I had chosen, with a tidy income and a nice, 
smug, comfortable life — chapel twice on Sunday, and a hot sup- 
per on Saturday night, and all — ” 

“ What a pity to have missed the hot suppers !” 

“ Yes ; it’s cold supper with me, every day of the week.” 

“ Why did you give up the shop ?” 

“ When I was a boy, I unluckily got hold of some scientific 
books, and I began to read them. Nothing seemed worth look- 
ing at after that, except science. I was lost to trade from that 
day.” 

And so you became a doctor ?” 

“ Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Doctor of Medi- 
cine in the University of London, general practitioner in this 
genteel neighborhood. This is the end of my scientific ambi- 
tions. London Hospital is not so very far from Mile-End, and 
it seemed to me as if the only way into the scientific life was 
through the hospital. A good many scientific men have begun 
that way, so why not I? I had never heard of the scientific 
schools or of University and King’s and South Kensington, you 


328 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


see, and the old man had never heard of them either. So I be- 
came a medico. Well, I’ve got the scientific life I asked for — 
Medicine is called scientific, I suppose — and it isn’t exactly the 
kind of life I fancied, which is always the way. You ask the 
Fates for what you want, and you get it ; they give it to you, 
and then it doesn’t turn out what you thought it was going 
to he.” 

“ But you’ve got the most beautiful, the most unselfish life in 
the world !” 

“ Have I ? Ho !” he grunted in derision. 

“The most beautiful and the best; you are everybody’s 
friend ; you go about carrying health and recovery in your 
hands.” 

“ Well, my hands are certainly occupied a good deal in mak- 
ing pills and compounding draughts, and there’s only a measly 
boy, besides, to help carry those pills and bottles. So I sup- 
pose you’re right. If I’d stuck to the shop I should have been 
measuring yards of stuff on the counter. Making pills or meas- 
uring calico, it doesn’t seem much of a choice to offer a man. 
But the calico for money.” 

“ Money !” This girl, who had so much, naturally held money 
in the deepest contempt. “ Money ! what does such a man as 
you want with money? What would you do with money? 
Money cannot advance science.” 

“ There is a sense of freedom without money, isn’t there ? A 
man with empty pockets isn’t tempted to buy things, and doesn’t 
nourish extravagant desires, and can’t give anything to any- 
body.” 

“ The work you do for them actually doesn’t want money. 

“ There you go,” replied the doctor. “ For them ! Hang it, 
can’t a man be allowed to do something for himself? Here I 
am, with the wages of a mechanic, doing twice a mechanic’s 
work ! I used to be ashamed, at first, of taking their half-crowns 
from the poor devils — I beg your pardon — from the others, and 
where is the life of science I longed for ?” 

“ Why, you have it — you must be learning something new 
every day !” 

“ Oh ! the action of drugs and the symptoms of disease — yes, 
to be sure, whatever advances man’s knowledge is good, I know,” 
he went on impatiently; “of course even this is better than 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


329 


standing behind a counter with a yard measure and a pair of 
scissors. But I wanted to advance knowledge — not my own, 
but the world’s. I had ambitions — but you don’t know ; women 
never understand.” 

“We sometimes understand a little,” she replied, humbly. 

“ See here.” He pointed to the sick girl, who lay with closed 
eyes, as if she were asleep. “ This is the great mystery which 
men are always searching after, and have never found. I wanted 
to be one of those who search. Some day it will be discovered, 
and then we shall be like the immortal gods. Meantime, what 
are we ? One after the other, for all of us in turn, the steady 
flame begins one day to dwindle; then it burns low; some- 
times it goes on flickering for a long time. Then it goes out. 
Birth, growth, decay and death. Why ? We cannot tell. We 
are surrounded by a great black cloud, which we keep pushing 
back farther and farther ; and it is always rolling in again. 
Whether it is close around us, or whether it is pushed far away, 
we never succeed in getting through it or looking over it. And 
beyond it---silence ! The generations pass away, and, one after 
the other, we all ask the same questions, and have to lie down 
unanswered.” 

“What is the use of asking questions which cannot be an- 
swered ?” 

“ The use ! The use ! There’s all the use, not for asking, but 
for looking. Those who keep on searching find at last. All 
the secret mysteries of life will be found out, some time or other ; 
and yet you think I ought to be satisfied with such work as 
this, while others are able to search.” He put on his hat and 
went away, without the usual ceremony of leave-taking. He 
was a very rude and unpolished person ; but somehow he was 
in earnest. Any man in earnest is always sure of forgiveness, 
whatever his social sins may be. 

“ I’ve been thinking,” he said, a day or two later, “ about 
your notions of an unselfish life. I can’t feel any reality about 
fit. A man must work, but he ought to choose his own work. 
And every man must work for himself. Would you have a man 
really satisfied with being a general practitioner in Hoxton ?” 

“ If there is no choice, isn’t it wisest to find out all that there 
is in his manner of life that is noble and generous, and so be 
contented with it ?” 


330 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ I don’t want nobility and generosity. I am a selfish creat- 
ure ; every man is, whatever you may pretend. Very well, then. 
I want everything that I can’t get — leisure, books, instruments, 
money to work with. What do I care about other people ? If 
I cared about other people I should be contented, and then my 
life would be just a selfish indulgence. Let me have all I want 
for myself first. I will think about other people afterwards.” 

“As it is, you can’t have what you want, and therefore you have 
made the best of it, and begun to think of other people first.” 

“Then, suppose I wanted” — ^he rested his chin in the palm 
of his left hand and his left elbow on his left knee, with his left 
leg crossed over the right — it is a meditative attitude — and he 
looked thoughtfully in her face. “ Suppose I wanted to make 
love ? Life is an incomplete kind of thing without it. Incom- 
plete with it, for that matter ; but still — ” 

“ You said the other day that men and women cheat them- 
selves with the unreal sentiment that they call love.” 

“ So I did. But sentiment may have its value.” 

“ And you said that man’s love was another name’ for his de- 
sire to obtain a slave.” 

“So it is. But there might be women for whom one, would 
reverse the situation.” 

“ And you despise women.” 

“ That is true, in a way — perhaps a little more than one de- 
spises men. So would you if you were a G-. P. But there are 
women one cannot despise. With these a man would willingly 
exchange the illusions of love.” 

“ Be patient, doctor ; perhaps your day will come. Meantime, 
though you are such a selfish creature, you do a good deal for 
these poor people, to gratify your own selfishness, no doubt.” 

“ In the way of business. I take their half-crowns all the while.” 

“ Yes, I know' how much you will get from the poor woman 
you sat up with this morning until four.” 

“ Way of business,” he repeated. “ I wonder who serves out 
the lives ; I suppose they are served out by some one. So many 
hundreds told ofi for general practitioners ; so many for starv- 
ing needlewomen; so many for drunken husbands. One,, just 
one, for Miss Valentine Eldridge.” 

There was certainly very little reason why this young doctor 
should look cheerfully on life. His practice was larger than is 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


331 


comfortable ; and the larger it grew the poorer he became, which 
is a truly wonderful result of success. He was paid in shillings 
and half-crowns ; he lived in a small house, with an old woman 
to look after him, and she looked after him badly. He made up 
his own medicines and dispensed them with the aid of a boy ; 
he walked about the streets all day and sometimes all night ; he 
made his meals and took his rest when he could; he had no 
time for reading, and his thirst for knowledge was very great. 
Tantalus was, I believe, a young and very successful general 
practitioner in a poor neighborhood, who ardently desired leisure 
for study and research. 

He had no society ; and the assistant-priest of St. Agatha — 
Mr. Randal Smith — was his only friend, and they quarrelled 
every time they met. 

“ Smith,” he said, one evening when he found time for a pipe 
and a glass of beer (of course Mr. Smith didn’t smoke, and 
sported a blue ribbon as proudly as if it had been the Order of 
the Garter) — “ Smith, did you ever turn your attention seriously 
to the question of love ?” 

Mr. Randal Smith’s pale face flushed. “ My work,” he said, 
proudly, compels the celibate life.” 

“ Don’t talk more ecclesiastically than you can help. Mine 
compels the celibate life as well, because the income isn’t more 
than enough for one ! But I don’t brag about it. Why can’t 
a man go on through life without falling in love ? Why does he 
ever want to hamper himself with a woman ? She doesn’t prob- 
ably know anything ; she doesn’t care for the things he cares 
about. Very likely she’s a fool ! He can never be so free when 
he is married as when he was unmarried.” 

“ Perhaps,” said the assistant-priest, “ she has qualities which 
he desires to possess.” 

“ You don’t fall in love with a pretty face — at least, only a 
fool does that — nor yet with a pretty flgure. I’m an anatomist, 
and I know all about the pretty flgure. It’s a flne piece of ma- 
chinery, I confess ; but it is a great deal too delicate for the work 
we expect of it, and it is always getting out of order. You can’t 
rail in love with a machine, or with the case they’ve made for it.” 

“ No ” — Mr. Randal Smith saw his chance to make a point — 

you fall in love with the soul.” 

“ Ah ! that’s your department. I never saw a soul in the 


332 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


dissecting-room ; never heard of anybody who did. All I know 

is, that there are no diseases in my knowledge which are caused 
by the soul, so that it can’t form part of the body !” 

“ It doesn’t,” the other man replied, still getting the best of 

it. “ That is why you fall in love with it.” 

Whatever it was that the doctor loved, it was called Valentine, 
and it had a very charming face, with eyes which spoke all kinds 
of possible things, and especially a most beautiful sympathy, so 
that this young doctor felt that he could talk about himself and 
his own thoughts all day long with her, and that neither of them 
would get tired. He, at least, would not. Men vary in their 
expressions of love ; but a strong and masterful nature generally 
takes this form and demands perfect sympathy from the object 
of its passion. So that the doctor was partly right in calling 
love the desire to get a slave for one’s self. The thing called 
Valentine, with which he was in love, also had a pretty figure, a 
graceful manner, and a highly pleasing voice. 

He spoke at last. It was in the beginning of October, a week 
before her furlough was to expire. 

“ You are actually going away in a week ?” he asked. 

“ Yes ; for a little while. You will come every day to look 
after Lotty while I am away, will you not ?” 

“ I will do what I can for her — or for you. Before you go ” — 
it was in Valentine’s room, but they had got into the habit of 
talking freely before Lotty, who seemed to take no notice of what 
was said by these two — “ before you go, I should like you to know 
— ^just for the sake of knowing — not that it will do any good, but 
still you ought to be told — that there are two men in love with you.” 

“ Oh ! Why should you tell me that ?” she answered, with a 
natural blush. 

“ They are not much to boast of — only Hoxton men ; but still 
— men.” 

“ Don’t go on, doctor.” 

“ I must, now. One of them is Randal Smith. He confessed 
it last night when I taxed him with it, after beating about the 
bush awhile. He’s been in love with you, he says, for a long 
time. Of course, he can’t look at things straight, and he pre- 
tends that it’s out of gratitude to you for singing and talking 
with his blessed boys — the humbug ! But he won’t tell you, 
because he’s got to be a celibate for the good of the Church — 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


333 


lio ! lio ! — and because you won’t submit to discipline 1 That’s 
what he calls confession, and penance, and Lent.” 

^n^^oor Mr. Smith ! I shall always think the better of my- 
self, because there never was a more unselfish man, I believe.” 

“ As for the other man — will you guess who that other man is ?” 

She met his eyes with perfect frankness and without a blush. 

“ Do you mean — yourself ?” 

“ Yes, I do. I don’t at all understand why, but it is so.” 

“ It is a part of the general pretence and unreality of life, 
perhaps.” 

“ No, it is as real as — as neuralgia, and as difficult to shake off. 
I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are. Smith doesn’t 
want an answer. Have you, by any chance, got one for me ?” 

“ Only, that a woman ought to be proud, to think that two 
such men like her. Will you go on liking me, both of you?” 
She offered him her hand, but he did not take it. 

“ I said love, not like,” he replied, grimly. “ Well, you’ve said 
what I knew you would say, only you’ve said it more kindly than 
I expected — or deserved, perhaps. Yet, I don’t know. If a man 
loves a woman he can but tell her so, even if she’s a royal prin- 
cess. That’ll do.” He rose and stooped over Lotty on the bed. 

“Feel easier this morning, don’t you ? That’s right. Had a 
good night ? Pretty good. Don’t talk much. Let Melenda 
come and talk to you, but don’t you talk. Very well ; now keep 
quiet. We shall soon be — quite well.” 

“ Doctor !” It was Valentine, as Lotty closed her eyes again 
and lay as if she were asleep. 

“ Quite well,” he repeated, with a kind of defiance. “ Asleep 
and well. What could be better for her, or for any of them, 
come to that, poor things !” 

The tears came to her eyes, but she said nothing. 

“ Her sorrows will soon come to an end. You have made 
her happy, in spite of them. Now I’ll go. Forgive me.” 

“ There is nothing to forgive, believe me.” 

“ I was bound to tell you, once, before you went away. I shall 
never speak of it again — you know it, and that is enough.” 

He looked in her face once more, from under his shaggy eye- 
brows, and pressed her hand. Then, as he left her and went 
his way, at the bottom of the stairs he tumbled over a couple of 
cats which were sleeping on the lowest step in the sun. I am 

Y 


334 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


sorry to say that he swore at those cats aloud. I have said that 
he was a rough and a rude young man. When he cursed those 
cats, he cursed his own fortune as well. Valentine heard the 
words and forgave them, understanding the cause. As for the 
cats, they knew the doctor very well, and retired with precipi- 
tation and wonder, asking each other what in the world could be 
the matter with a man whom they had known and respected since 
kittendom as a constant and tried friend of cats. There are a 
great many cats about Ivy Lane — cats have taken the place for- 
merly occupied by oyster-shells in poor neighborhoods — but 
the doctor had never before kicked a single one of them. There- 
fore they were naturally hurt and surprised. One more illusion 
gone. 

“ Valentine,” Lotty whispered, “ you are going away in a few 
days. I heard all that you said.” 

“ Yes, dear, but only for a day or two. I shall come back. 
Do not be afraid.” 

“The doctor loves you. Everybody loves you, except Me- 
lenda. And I shall soon be quite well. Oh, I know now what 
he means. I understand things much better now than I did be- 
fore you came. Oh ! before you came. If I could but see Tilly 
once more before I am quite well — and asleep.” 

“ Lotty — Lotty — my poor child.” 

“Don’t cry, Valentine. Perhaps Melenda will* give in when 
I am — asleep and well — because we have been such friends, her 
and me. And you’ve been so good to me. You’ll be patient 
with Melenda, won’t you ?” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

HOW MELENDA WAS DRILLED. 

When Melenda carried back the bundle of finished work to 
the shop she generally returned with the money and another 
bundle, if work was abundant and she was lucky, by noon, or one 
o’clock at latest. On this occasion, which was a certain morning 
towards the end of September, she did not return at the usual 
time, nor did she indeed come back until past seven o’clock in the 
evening, when she appeared at Valentine’s door with empty hands. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


335 


They’ve drilled me,” she said, with a catching in her breath. 
“They’ve drilled me all day long.” 

“ Oh ! Melenda !” It was a bad day with Lotty, and she was 
reduced to a whisper. “ Oh, Melenda !” 

“And they haven’t finished yet. Don’t tell Liz, hut it was 
all along of her button-holes. She’s got dreadful careless lately.” 

“ What is drilling ?” asked Valentine. “ Melenda, you look 
frightfully pale.” 

Melenda was a brave girl, and strong, but the day’s work, 
whatever it was, had been too much for her ; and now she sank 
into a chair and threw her hat upon the floor. Her cheeks were 
white, but her eyes were hot and angry. 

“ I’m tired, that’s all. So would you be ; and I’m hungry, 
too. No, I won’t have anything out of your cupboard. There’s 
some cold tea and some bread-and-butter in the other room.” 

Valentine brought them to her; it was the first time that 
Melenda had accepted any service from her. But in taking the 
food from Valentine’s hands she preserved her independence, 
because it was her own bread-and-butter. 

“What is drilling ?” asked Valentine again. 

“ Last time they drilled her,” whispered Lotty, “ she went otf 
directly she came home, and we had dreadful trouble to bring 
her round. Don’t go off, Melenda dear.” 

“ I ain’t going off ; I’m better now. Don’t tell Liz it was her 
fault.” 

The trouble came upon Melenda through Lizzie’s laches, not 
her own. It is not everybody that can bear a glimpse of the 
better life. That which poor Lizzie got caused her the most 
poignant envy and discontent. Very soon Valentine would go 
away and leave them. Then the bread for dinner would re- 
appear, and the dainty meals which Valentine had given her would 
be a memory of the past to embitter the present, and the stock- 
ings and shoes and “things” with which Valentine had replen- 
ished her scanty wardrobe would wear out, and there would be 
no money to get any more. Let us do the child justice ; she 
thought, too, how the cheerful face, the kindly voice, the even- 
ing song, the lips that never uttered a harsh word, would go too, 
and the lodgings return to their former condition when they 
were all comparatively satisfied, because they knew no better. 
“ This is the way,” she said to herself, “ that ladies live at home, 


336 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


and tliis is the way we live,” and always in her ear the voice 
whispering, “ Come with me, and you shall live like a lady.” 
The good food which Valentine provided her, the comparative 
ease — because now that Lotty was off their hands they were able 
to get along with less work — ^the better clothes that she wore, 
the greater attention which she paid to Valentine’s example, and 
therefore to neatness and cleanliness, had made poor Lizzie by 
this time a really pretty girl. When Valentine came she was a 
girl with possibilities ; now she was a girl with realities ; her figure 
filled out and rounded, her cheek fuller and of a healthier hue — 
her eyes brighter. She represented, in fact, like any other ani- 
mal, the advantages which result from good and regular feeding. 

But these things made her, as well, careless in her work, and 
Melenda was drilled, therefore. 

“But what is drilling?” Valentine repeated. 

“ I got there,” said Melenda, eating her bread-and-butter rav- 
enously, “ at half-past nine this morning. I thought I’d be in 
good time. So I was. The clerk — it’s the fat-faced one with 
the whiskers — he took my work and passed it in. Presently he 
calls me and he says, ‘ You stand there,’ he says. ‘ They’ll send 
down your money and your work presently,’ sezee. Then he 
grinned, and the other girls who were standing about the shop 
for their turn, they looked at each other, and they whispered, 

‘ You poor thing ! He’s going to drill you.’ Of course I knew 
that. And so he did.” 

“ Oh !” 

“Drilled you?” asked Valentine, for the fourth time. 

“ Now I’m better,” said Melenda, finishing her bread-and-but- 
ter. “ Coming home, Lotty, I thought I should ha’ dropped.” 

“ But tell me what they’ve done.” 

“ Lord ! you don’t know anything, and you’ve been here nearly 
three months. You’re real ignorant, Valentine.” Melenda, in 
her own opinion, knew everything. “ It’s like this, you know. 
If the work isn’t so good as it ought to be, they just drill us. 
Well, we can’t help it. A girl hasn’t got any rights, Sam says, 
because she can’t fight for herself, and nobody cares to fight for 
us. The men they stand up for the men, and the women stand 
up for the men, but they don’t care for other women. Sam says 
so. As for the ladies, what odds is it to them if we are all 
drilled to death ?” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


337 


‘‘But what is it?” Valentine asked; “how do they do it?” 

“ They don’t do anything. They just tell you to stand and 
wait, and they keep you waiting. If you go out, you’re told 
when you come back that the work’s come down and been given 
to another girl. You’ve just got to wait for your money and 
for the new work as long as they choose to keep you. Some- 
times they’ve drilled a woman for five or six days, and her with 
babies at home crying for their food. What do they care ?” 

“ Oh ! but it is impossible. Have you been kept standing all 
day long ? Actually standing all day ? And without food ? Have 
you had nothing to eat ?” 

“ Not likely,” said Melenda ; “ neither dinner nor tea.” 

“ Melenda,” said Valentine, “ you must let some one help you. 
Oh ! my dear, it is a shame ! It is -borribie !” 

“ I won’t, then,” Melenda cried, fiercely. “ I said I wouldn’t, 
and I won’t. I’ve always been independent, and I always will 
be.” It was her formula of consolation, and, though it was no 
more than a fetish, it never failed. 

“ Independent ! Oh, Melenda — what independence !” 

In the morning Melenda went again to get her money and her 
work. Again the clerk ordered her to stand aside and wait. She 
was to be drilled a second day, a punishment which marked the 
gravity of her offence. 

Melenda obeyed with an angry spot in either cheek. Some of 
the women about the place whispered her that it was a shame. 
It was all that the women could do. “ It is a shame,” they 
whispered low, so that the men should not hear. The whole 
history of woman seems somehow contained and summed up in 
those four short words, “ It is a shame !” 

If you think of it, the chivalrous sentiment and the Christian 
sentiment and the humanitarian sentiment, all combined, have 
done but little as yet to remove the truth and force of those four 
little words. Everywhere the woman gets the worst of it. She 
is the hardest worked, and has to do all the nastiest kinds of 
work ; she is the worst paid ; she is always bullied, scolded, 
threatened, nagged, and sworn at ; she has the worst food ; she 
has the lion’s share of the trouble and the lamb’s share of the 
pleasure ; she has no holidays ; she has the fewest amusements. 
Even in those circles where women do not work and are never 
kicked, she has the worst of it. Beautiful things have been 
15 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


SOS' 

written about womanhood, damsels, and gracious ladies. Girls 
do, in fact, enjoy a brief reign while they are wooed and not yet 
won. And after that the men take for themselves everything 
that is worth having, save only in those well-appointed and de- 
sirable establishments where there is enough to go round for 
man and wife too. But for the great, broad, lower stratum of 
the social pyramid, there is but one sentence that wdll express 
the truth. You will hear it from the lips of women and girls 
wherever working women and girls meet together ; on the pave- 
ment and outside the shops it is cried aloud ; in the shops and 
work-rooms it is only whispered ; one short sentence, in four 
short words, “ It is a shame !” 

All day long to stand and wait. It seems a cruel thing. And 
very likely at home the children crying for their bread, or sitting 
empty and hungry at school, while the figures swim and reel 
upon the blackboard, and the teachers wonder how children can 
be expected to learn when they have had no breakfast and no 
dinner. To be made to stand and Avait from half-past nine in the 
morning until seven in the evening. And women, my Christian 
brothers, are not really so strong as men, though we treat them 
as if they were capable of far more endurance than we ourselves 
ever give to our own work. It seems cruel ; but then, consider, 
drilling is punishment. There must be punishment. And the 
very nature and essence of punishment is that it is unpleasant. 
In the good old slavery times women were tied up to the post 
and lashed, which hurt them a good deal, and even inflicted deep 
flesh wounds and caused indelible scars. But these heal up ; 
the pain of being drilled for three or four days in succession is 
certainly a great deal Avorse than the pain of being lashed for 
three or four minutes, and the injuries it inflicts on a girl are 
not skin and flesh injuries, and do not heal up, nor can they be 
forgotten in a day or tAvo. Quite the contrary ; these injuries 
last a whole lifetime, and sometimes lap over to the next genera- 
tion. There must, however, be punishments in every trade ; how 
else are you to get work done properly? You cannot fine a 
woman Avhom you have already engaged, according to the strict- 
est principles of sound political economy, on the law of eleven- 
pence ha^enny ; you are not allowed by foolish modern Iuavs to 
flog her, not even to correct her Avith a cane, nor to box her ears, 
nor to kick her ; it is no use turning her ofl, because the next 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


339 


girl will be no better ; you may not put her in the stocks or the 
pillory ; you may not duck her : civilization, humanity, Chris- 
tianity, and political economy agree together in forbidding all 
these things. But they agree in allowing an employer to pay 
starvation wages to his girls, and, by way of punishment, when 
he pleases, to drill them. It is a small and miserably inadequate 
kind of punishment. Let us pity the poor employers ; they 
have nothing else left. 

On the third day she went again. 

Again she was told to stand aside and wait. 

Again she obeyed, and prepared submissively for a third day 
of patient suffering. 

Only one hundred and fifty years ago, when maid-servants or 
workgirls committed any fault, it was customary to beat them 
with sticks. As it was the custom, no one took much notice. 
One of the sights of London was Bridewell Prison, where visit- 
ors and idlers went to see the women flogged. Sometimes, again, 
the women were placed in pillory and so exposed to the derision 
of the multitude. It seems barbarous to us when we read of 
these things. We have now, no doubt, cast away forever such 
barbarities. Of course we have — w^e are now so considerate and 
kind to women that we never overwork them, never pay them 
wretched wages, and are constantly careful that other people 
shall treat them with equal consideration. This is an age of 
humanity. We even go too far in our resolution that there shall 
be no cruelty. If a schoolmaster flogs a boy we invent stories 
to stimulate and goad the public wrath. We say that the school- 
master has even cut the boy’s toes off in the zeal of his argu- 
mentum baculinum. We will have no boys whipped, no donkeys 
kicked, no dogs or cats ill-treated ; and it is commonly reported 
that the cases of the fox, the hare, the rabbit, the weasel, the 
stoat, the pheasant, the partridge, and the grouse are shortly to 
be taken into serious consideration. Wherefore it is absurd to 
suppose that there can be any cruelty in drilling. 

Girls who are drilled do not cry out, to begin with, nor do 
they write to the papers. They know very well that, if they do 
venture to complain, they will get no more work. Besides, if it 
were cruel, if it were not for their own good, it would not be 
done. Like many other necessary chastisements, however, drill- 
ing has its disagreeable side. Those girls, to begin with, who 


340 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


habitually work sitting all day, feel extremely uncomfortable 
after standing for a couple of hours. The discomfort increases 
to the point of pain, and from pain to torture if it be prolonged 
sufficiently. When the torture does begin, the girl feels first of 
all grievous pains in her limbs ; she shifts her weight from one 
foot to the other, her feet swell, her back and shoulders ache, 
her head becomes an aching lump of lead ; she is nothing at all 
from head to foot but a collection of aches and pains ; there is 
no part of her which does not give her pain ; every bone is ach- 
ing, every muscle is drawn, every joint is swollen, and you may 
observe, if you take the least interest in a girl who is being 
drilled, that, after an hour or two, her cheeks have become 
flushed, her lips tremble, her hands are shaking, and her eyes 
are unnaturally bright. 

There is another thing. Workgirls do not generally break- 
fast off anything richer or more substantial than bread, or bread- 
and-butter. At stroke of noon they are ready for their dinner, 
which may be bread with a piece of fried fish — it is cheap and 
very nourishing dipped in oil, as the Beni Yakub love it — and 
sometimes of bread-and-butter with tea. At one o’clock, if this 
meal has not been provided, they are desperately hungry ; by 
two or three, they are faint and sick with hunger. By the even- 
ing, if they have had nothing since breakfast, they are devoured 
by that pain which was once poetically and happily likened unto 
the gnawing of a wolf at the intestines by a man whose name 
has been forgotten, but who had personally experienced this 
pain, and had also been chawed by a real wolf — I think it was 
in Epping Forest, about the time of King Athelstane. This 
man, who lived to a great age, and now lies buried in Green- 
stead churchyard, beside St. Edmund’s oaken church, always de- 
clared that he greatly preferred the real animal to his imitator. 

All day long the people came and went in the shop, each one 
about his own business, nobody regarding so insignificant a 
thing as a young workgirl standing still and submissive; no 
one, indeed, knew or guessed or cared to think that here was a 
girl who was aching in every bone and sick and faint with fatigue 
and hunger, waiting for money due to her and for work prom- 
ised her, who had so waited two days and was now waiting the 
third day. And the hours when one is being drilled move on so 
slowly. They go too slowly in the City for those in the ranks 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


341 


of Clerkdom ; far too slowly for the youngsters who want to he 
off and away, using up the last of the autumn evenings upon the 
bicycle in the roads about Leyton and Wanstead ; far too slowly 
for the young man who longs for the evening, when he may 
walk and talk with the girl who is going to marry him as soon 
as he reaches the income of a hundred and twenty pounds ; too 
slowly for him who is already married and now draws two hun- 
dred, and has a house at Leytonstone, with a garden and children 
five. But the hours went much more slowly to Melenda than to 
any of these. The fat-faced clerk already mentioned — he with 
the whiskers — went on with his work, and from time to time 
turned his eye upon Melenda. Because it was the custom, he 
thought nothing of the punishment. Just in the same way, 
when the Romans nailed a man on the cross, the thing was so 
common that none of the passers-by gave a thought to his agony. 
He hung up there, over them, sometimes enduring his agony for 
two or three days, while everybody went on below just as if the 
man were lying on a bed of roses. The soldiers on guard rat- 
tled their dice, and told their stories, and sang snatches of song ; 
the boys played with their knucklebones and quarrelled and 
fought at the foot of the gibbet ; the women carried their fruit 
to market on their heads, and hardly looked up ; the happy 
lovers passed hand in hand beneath the man who would love no 
more, and on whose drooping head were the dews of death ; the 
scholars walked by disputing. There was a man being slowly 
done to death upon the cross — well, it was the custom. This 
clerk was like the Romans ; I dare say he knew that drilling was 
painful, but it was the custom. The girl had left at home, very 
likely, brothers and sisters who were waiting for the money and 
the work, and were, meantime, without food : perhaps he under- 
stood in his dull and unsympathetic way that hunger is an ex- 
tremely painful thing. But it was the custom. He was only 
doing his regular work. He was no more moved than the 
Roman soldiers, or than the schoolmaster is moved by the sad 
face of a boy kept in, or than the beadle was wont to be moved 
when, in the days of his now lost magnificence, he walked, gold- 
headed staff in hand, beside the wretch who was being admon- 
ished at the cart tail by the nine-tailed vengeance. It was the 
custom. 

Out of so many workgirls, there are always so many careless 


342 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


girls ; therefore so mucli drill, so mucli starvation. It was notlsr 
ing but the necessary discipline of the establishment. The clerk 
was really a very kind-hearted person, who would not willingly 
give any one pain. . He spoke with the greatest abhorrence of 
the ruthless Russian and the tyrannous Turk; if he had any 
money to spare he would subscribe to all kinds of virtuous and 
benevolent things, such as the Cruelty to Animals Society ; and 
as for vivisection, words fail him when he even thinks of it. 
One is anxious that this gentleman, who is still comparatively 
young, should not be misrepresented, and, therefore, it should 
be added that he is a member of a surpliced choir, in which he 
sings tenor, and that he belongs to a guild, and sometimes is 
allowed to put on a long cassock, which makes him completely 
happy. The chiefs of the establishment have houses at Buck- 
hurst Hill, Stoke Newington, and Finchley. They are all most 
kind-hearted men. If their children were kept waiting for break- 
fast a single quarter of an hour, they would turn every servant 
— man Jack and maid Jill — out of doors; if any of their own 
girls were kept without food for a whole day, they would fall 
into apoplectic fits. It is needless to say that they are diligent 
at church and chapel ; they approve of all good works ; on the 
question of discipline they speak vaguely ; on that of woman’s 
wage they cling manfully to the great sheet-anchor of trade — 
the primal law — the most beautiful and most beneficent of all 
laws — that of supply and demand. Theirs, you see, is the de- 
mand ; the girls furnish the supply. In the evening the chiefs, 
who make a succulent luncheon at one, go home every man to a 
handsome dinner at half-past seven, picking up something on 
their way at the fish and game shop outside Broad Street Sta- 
tion. At the moment when their gongs proclaimed the serving 
of dinner, Melenda would be allowed to go home to her bread 
and tea. 

I believe that a two-days’ drill is considered severe. Melenda’s 
case must, therefore, have been very serious indeed, for she was 
drilled the third day, and perhaps it was intended that the drill 
should go on for a day or two longer, but an accident, the nat- 
ure of which you will learn immediately, prevented the continu- 
ance of the punishment. It was not that Melenda “ went ofif,” 
or fell down, or fiew into a rage and delivered her mind and was 
consequently excited. She did none of these things. She stood 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


343 


perfectly quiet and waited. The clerk began to think that pun- 
ishment had gone far enough, but it was not by his orders that 
girls were drilled. That was done in a department up-stairs, 
which took about as much human interest in the girls as a board 
of magistrates laying down rules for prison diet, or a board of 
guardians ordering a costume for workhouse girls, or the Ad- 
miralty issuing orders for the British sailor. 

Valentine it was who ended her punishment for her. 

When they found that Melenda did not return by the noon 
of the third day, Valentine declared that the thing should no 
longer be endured. 

It was nearly one o’clock. Melenda stood alone in a kind of 
corner, out of the way of the people who kept coming and go- 
ing. She now hoped for nothing but for the stroke of seven — 
still six long hours distant — and stood swaying herself gently 
from side to side to ease some of the pains which racked her 
limbs. When she saw Valentine at the door she changed color, 
and was ashamed. This was indeed, she reflected, a beautiful 
kind of independence — independence to be justly proud of ! 
Valentine looked about the place, saw Melenda standing in her 
corner, and then addressed the man who seemed to be in oflice. 
It was, in fact, the clerk whom Melenda called “ him with the 
fat face.” 

“ Is it, pray,” she asked, “ by your orders that girls are tor- 
tured in this place ?” 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” he replied. 

“ Is it by your orders, then, that the workgirls are drilled, as 
you call it ?” 

“ No, it isn’t. The orders come from up-stairs.” 

“Will you tell me where I can find the chief partner of the 
house ?” 

“ Oh ! come,” said the clerk, laughing, “ that’s too good, that 
is ! You don’t expect him to bother his head about a workgirl, 
do you ?” 

“ Will you take me to him ?” 

“ Well, no — I won’t, if you come to that. It’s more than my 
place is worth.” 

“ Will you tell me his name ?” 

“ Why, of- course ; all you’ve got to do is to read the name 
on the brass plate at the door.” 


344 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


He dimly perceived, through the fog of daily routine and 
custom, which clouded a perhaps otherwise fair understanding, 
that here was a young lady, and that there was going to be a 
row. 

There was, hut not much ; because you really cannot expect 
the senior partner in so great a house to trouble himself about a 
mere insignificant London workgirl. You can’t sell a workgirl 
as you can sell a roll of silk ; you can buy her, it is true, and 
you can buy her cheap, and you can use her up quick ; you can 
drill her if she is careless ; you can pay her the wages of com- 
petition — in some confusion of ideas, Valentine thought these 
must be the wages of sin turned the other way about. All this 
an employer can do with a workgirl, but he cannot sell her ; so 
that he has naturally no direct interest in her, except to get as 
much work out of her as he can while she lasts. And this, of 
course, he does. 

In ten minutes’ time Valentine reappeared. With her was an 
elderly gentleman of benevolent aspect. 

“You shall see for yourself,” she said, indignantly. “You 
cannot disclaim the responsibility for abominable cruelties com- 
mitted in your name. You shall deny them if you can !” 

“ Cruelties ! Really, my dear young lady — cruelties in my 
house ! It is absurd. Let us see these cruelties.” He looked 
at her card — “ Miss Valentine Eldridge.” 

“ I am a daughter of Lady Mildred Eldridge,” she said, in- 
stinctively getting at a weak place. “ Now, sir, will you please 
to tell me whether it is by your approval or by your orders that 
this girl has been ordered to stand here for three days, from 
half-past nine in the morning till seven at night — nearly ten 
hours each day — without being permitted to leave the place or 
to sit down for three whole days? To stand all day without 
food from nine until seven ! Would you dare to use your own 
daughter so ?” 

“ Really, this is very — ” 

“ For three days ! Oh !” Valentine was now so indignant 
that she said more than was wise. “ Do you understand at all 
what it means to stand for ten hours in one place ? Do you 
understand what it is to go without food for a whole day? Do 
you know that she has been kept from the money. owing to her 
all this time ? You have, I suppose, the right to pay her starva- 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


345 


tion wages and to overwork her. Have you the right to torture 
her?” 

“ One moment, Miss Eldridge.” He called the clerk and re- 
tired up the shop in conversation with him. 

“ I hear,” he said, presently returning, “ that the girl was not 
told to stand, but to wait ; there has been nothing to prevent 
her sitting down, or going out for dinner or tea, had she chosen ; 
her work was kept back for three days as a slight — a very slight 
and inadequate — punishment for very culpable negligence. Un- 
der these circumstances I trust that you will recall the harsh ex- 
pression.” He spoke with great dignity, but his cheeks were red. 

“ I will not. Your excuse is a miserable prevarication ! It is 
false that the girl could sit down or go out. She has been de- 
liberately tortured. You make a practice of torturing the poor, 
helpless women you employ.” 

“ At all events, it shall not occur again with this girl. She 
shall receive whatever money may be owing to her, and she may 
go. We will strike her name off our books,” said the senior 
partner. “ Since discipline is construed into cruelty, and kind- 
ness into torture, you had better. Miss Eldridge, take your pro- 
tegee elsewhere. I am sorry I cannot help her any longer.” 

Nothing could have been grander than the way in which he 
delivered himself of these words. He took off his hat and re- 
tired. It was not until he was gone that Valentine found any 
reply, and then it would have been unequal in dignity to that 
of the manufacturer. 

“ Now you’ve lost your work altogether,” said the clerk. 
“ Lord, what a fuss to make about a day’s drill !” 

“ Will you find a chair for the next girl you drill ?” asked 
Valentine. 

“Well, miss,” he replied — mindful of the senior partner’s 
■v^^ords — “ I told her to wait ; I didn’t say stand ! Is it my fault 
that there was no chair ?” 

“We are always made to stand,” said Melenda. “Never 
mind — there’s other places !” 

They went av/ay, Valentine feeling miserably guilty. She had 
fallen into a rage, and before a man known all over London for 
active benevolence, and she had gone to his private room and 
accused him of cruelty and of torture, and of underpaying his 
girls and overworking them. Valentine, for once in her life, 
15 ^ 


346 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


showed — ^to put it mildly — an immense capacity for indignation. 
She startled the good old man, and when she offered proof of her 
words, he could not choose but follow. 

He had a dinner-party that evening, and I think he must 
have been feeling uncomfortable, in spite of his grave and dig- 
nified language, because he talked a good deal about the ques- 
tion of women’s wages. They were necessarily, it was agreed 
by all, ruled by the state of the labor market first, and the pro- 
duction market next. And there was only one feeling, that it 
was most desirable to find some way in which the wages of 
women and girls could, without violation of political economy, 
be improved. He did not tell the drill story, because there were 
one or two awkward points about it. Besides, this young lady 
certainly had friends, and her friends might write to papers. 
Now, there is nothing in the whole world which men of all ranks, 
classes, trades, fortunes, or professions dread more than the pub- 
lication of “ trade customs because, somehow, from the fee 
of a barrister down to the bill of a plumber, so many delicate 
questions can be raised, and so many awkward questions may 
present their sharp and spiky points ; and it is not enough to 
feel, as we do feel, that we are all in the same boat. This makes 
it, in fact, worse, because if any one in his wrath should happen 
to bore a hole in the boat on account of another man’s sins, 
down we all go together. The benevolent senior partner could 
not get out of his mind the white face and trembling limbs of 
the girl he had been drilling. They made him feel actually un- 
comfortable. Besides, he was afraid of the newspapers. Per- 
haps, however, nothing more would be said about it. 

“ You’ve got my work took from me, Valentine,” said Me- 
lenda, not ungraciously. “ Never mind — you gave it him hot ! 
He didn’t like it, though he bounced it off. There won’t be 
much more drilling done there for a month or two. But, Lord ! 
it isn’t him you should blame. He don’t know nothing about 
it. It’s up-stairs where the orders for drill comes from 1” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


347 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

MELENDA IS VANQUISHED. 

Thanks, therefore, to Valentine’s well-meant, but perhaps in- 
judicious, interference, there was now no work to do, and the 
girls were idle. Of the two evils, compulsory idleness, with no 
money and therefore no food, or compulsory drudgery, with 
very little money and very little food, perhaps the latter is the 
lesser, though workgirls differ in opinion. Lizzie, leaving the 
care of the future to Melenda, went rambling about the streets, 
appearing regularly at meal-times in Valentine’s room; if she 
loved anything it was idleness, and, as she could now get well 
fed without doing any work, she was contented with the pres- 
ent, and not anxious to begin again at the button-holes. 

Melenda it was who went seeking work, and, as generally 
happens in such cases, found none. There were already, as she 
very well knew, far more seekers than work for them. This is 
the hopelessness of women, that there are so many who seek for 
work and will take it at any terms. There are, for instance, 
those who ought not to take it at all, such as girls of the better 
sort who live at home and will do work for any wretched pay in 
order to earn a little money for dress ; then there is the married 
woman, who will take work for any pay in order to buy a pair of 
new boots for her boy : these crowd the shops side by side with 
the women whose very livelihood depends upon their work, and 
are obliged to take whatever work and whatever pay is offered. 

It was a slack time, too, and perhaps the history of Helen da’s 
late dismissal was noised abroad to her discredit among estab- 
lishments which reserve the right of torture. However that may 
have been, Melenda got no work. She was greatly magnani- 
mous. She never charged Lizzie with the carelessness which 
brought on punishment ; more than this, she did not suffer 
Valentine to feel that she had been indiscreet in her treatment 
of the chief partner. And she was too proud to complain, and 


348 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


SO sat in misery and hunger alone in her room, except when she 
sat by Lotty’s bedside. Why was she so long in getting well, 
when she had plenty to eat and nothing to do, and rest for her 
poor back ? Yet she showed no signs of getting better, and only 
spoke in a whisper, and grew daily thinner and more wasted. 

Melenda’s got no money at all left now,” said Lizzie, after 
four or five days of this vain and fruitless seeking. “ Yesterday 
there was twopence ; to-day there is nothing, not even a loaf.” 

She made this remark as if it were a matter of quite small im- 
portance. At a certain depth, the fact of being penniless and out 
of work is not so uncommon as to excite either wonder or com- 
passion. Besides, there had been penniless times before, and 
they had pulled through somehow. 

But Valentine hurried to Melenda’s room. She found her 
sitting beside the table ; there was nothing at all on the plate 
where the loaf was wont to stand ; the lid of the teapot was off ; 
there was no work on the table ; the room was quite neat and 
tidy. Now for a workwoman’s room to be tidy means that 
there is no work. The girl’s eyes were set hard, and when she 
saw Valentine at the door they became harder. “What do you 
want here ?” she asked. “ I haven’t asked you for any help, and 
I won’t — I’ll starve first.” 

“ Oh, Melenda, you are starving already ! You have starved 
because you were so proud. My dear, if you will not accept, 
will you at least borrow ?” 

“ No, I won’t have anything from you.” 

“You have had a great deal from me already. Take a little 
more.” 

“ What have I had from you ?” 

“You have taken for your friends what you refused for your- 
self.” 

Lizzie may do what she likes. As for Lotty — ” Her voice 
broke down, and the tears came into her eyes. “ I’ve done what 
I could for her. All I could do I’ve done ; I’d ha’ worked my 
fingers to the bone for her. But that wouldn’t ha’ done her any 
good. We’ve been friends for eight years.” 

“ You have, indeed !” said Valentine. 

You know and have read how in certain wild parts of the 
earth, where the policeman and the Ten Commandments which 
he guards are both unknown, and the choicer blessings of civil- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


£49 


ization have not yet arrived, and even Lynch is as little stud- 
ied as Coke upon Blackstone, men join hands and become 
sworn friends and allies against all the world. But, as in our 
modern times the word “ friendship ” has come to mean so weak 
and feeble an alliance that your friend will not hesitate to stab 
you in the back with an epigram, or to ruin your fondest hopes 
for his own advantage, it has been found necessary to make use 
of another word. These men in the wild places are therefore 
brothers. We ourselves — we of civilization and slang — when 
we mean that a man is a real friend, call him affectionately a pal. 
It is expected of a pal that he will stand by one both in public 
and in private. This differentiates him from a friend. 

Workgirls, however, are friends, not sisters or pals. Like the 
men in the wild places of the earth, where every stranger is an 
enemy, and every creature one meets is a wild creature, they 
stand hand in hand ; everybody is an enemy ; those who employ 
them rob them ; those who sell them food rob them ; they are 
robbed in their rent, they are everywhere and in everything 
robbed, stinted, and starved. Political economy is dead against 
them — who can stand up against professors? They are weak of 
body and have no power of speech ; they are as dumb sheep, for 
they do not even bleat in complaint, but together — two and two 
— they are strong in patience : together they can suffer, togeth- 
er they can bear the life which we of the Christian brotherhood 
have assigned to them in these happy and religious days of 
charity, faith, and hope. In this Saturnian age, when we are 
all brothers and sisters in love and sympathy, standing together 
hand in hand, they can find something like contentment among 
the potsherds and the mouldy crusts. 

“ It’s me, after all, that she could have done without,” Melen- 
da went on, “ and you that’s done everything for her.” 

“ You have taken this service from me for her sake,” said 
Valentine ; “my dear, take another service — for her sake — I do 
not say for your own.” 

“ You want me to take your food and your money. I won’t, 
then ; I’ll starve first ! I am starving ! Oh, there’s a pain like 
a knife inside me ! Go away and laugh at me !” 

“ Oh, you are too proud ! Melenda, would you disturb poor 
Lotty’s last days ? Will you let her die in sorrow because you 
are so hard ?” 

Z 


350 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Her last days Melenda sprang to her feet. What do 
you mean?” 

“ I mean that she is dying. She may last a week, or even 
three months, hut she is dying ! Nothing can save her now. 
Oh, Melenda, your friend is dying !” 

“ Lotty dying ? Lotty dying ?” She sank into her chair in 
despair. She knew already that Lotty would never recover. But 
between going to die and actually dying there seems so wide' a 
space. 

“ She will very soon pass away from us, my dear ; away from 
the crowded street and her life of toil and pain. Would you 
keep her? You would not wish that she should stay. She is 
going to some better land. While she lives, Melenda, my sister, 
let us make her happy. She can only be happy if she knows, 
when her eyes are closed at last, and she has no more pain to 
bear, that you and I will love each other, for her sake — for her 
dear sake, Melenda.” 

“ Lotty — dying !” she murmured, as if she had not heard. 

Then Valentine threw herself at her feet and caught her by 
the hands. 

“ Oh ! my dear — my dear ! Do the thing — for her — which 
Lotty most desires. ‘ If only,’ she said this morning, ‘ if only 
Melenda will leave oft’ being hard-hearted.’ The doctor has told 
her that she will die, and she is not afraid, poor dear. But she 
is troubled for your sake. Forget your angry thoughts and an- 
gry words, Melenda ; they shall be as if they never had been 
spoken. Try to believe that I love you. My poor, proud, brave 
girl, you have suffered so much and have been so strong. Let 
love break down your pride !” 

The tears fell fast on Melenda’s hands. 

“ What’s the use ?” she cried ; “ oh ! what’s the use ? Lotty’s 
dying, and I am all alone. You are a young lady; I don’t be- 
lieve you are my sister Polly at all. Sam says it’s the other, 
because she’s like Joe’s Rhoder. How can you love me even if 
you are Polly ? Look at your clothes, and look at mine.” 

“ My clothes ? What have clothes to do with it ? Do you 
think I have watched you every day for three months and seen 
how brave you are, and how you have worked for Lotty, and 
how patient you have been with Liz, and your resolution, and — 
and everything ” — she could not refer to evenness of temper but 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


351 


there are always some points which must he omitted — “ and not 
love and admire you ?” 

“ Oh ! what’s the use ?” cried the girl ; “ I’m always cross 
and ill-tempered, even with Lotty.” She slipped one hand from 
Valentine’s grasp, and passed it over her streaming eyes. 

“ Try me, dear,” said Valentine. 

She threw her arms round poor Melenda’s neck, and kissed 
her a dozen times. “ I told you when I came,” she said, “ that 
perhaps I was your sister Polly. Perhaps I am not, after all. 
Polly or not, we are sisters, you and I, always sisters. Shall we 
promise ?” 

“ If — if you like,” said Melenda, with such sobs and tears as 
become the vanquished ; “ if you like.” 

“ Then, my dear, sisters must do everything they are told to 
do by each other. You will order me, and I will order you. 
First, I am going to dress you.” 

Melenda was conquered. 

Valentine ran into her own room, and came hack with a bun- 
dle of things. 

“ Do you think I am going to have my own sister go about in 
such shocking rags as these any longer ? Take off your frock 
this minute, and — oh, the ragged petticoat ! Here is one of 
mine, and a frock, and a pair of my own stockings. Everything 
has got to be changed. You are not quite so tall as I am, hut 
the frock is short for me. There, my dear, the stockings fit you 
like a glove. You and I have both got such small feet, which is 
almost a proof that I am Polly, after all. The frock is a little 
loose in the waist — that is because you are so thin — but you will 
fill out very soon now. Oh I my dear, what sticks of arms you’ve 
got ! Mother says she can count every rib in your body, and I 
am sure I could. That comes of eating so little. To-day you 
shall have chops, and to-morrow steaks, and you shall never — 
never — never go back any more to your horrid cold tea and 
bread-and-butter, mind that, Now, there’s your hair. Do you 
know, Melenda, you have got much finer hair than most girls ? 
See what a color it has ! Artists would give anything to paint 
that beautiful dead-gold hair. What a pity you cut it in the 
front! You will have to let it grow again. Why, it hangs 
down below your waist. Now sit quite steady, my dear, and I 
will dress it for you nicely, so as to hide the nasty fringe.” 


35 ?^ 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Witli true artistic feeling, Valentine carefully combed back 
the fringe, and plaited a braid of the thick red hair to hold it 
back in its place, and rolled up the great mass of hair behind. 
When it was completed, the effect was wonderful. For the first 
time there was displayed a broad and white forehead ; for the 
first time Melenda’s eyes showed at their best — strong and stead- 
fast eyes, deep set, though now red with tears ; for the first time 
her face looked as Nature intended it to look, not beautiful, but 
clear, capable, and trustworthy. In the gray dress which Val- 
entine gave her, with a red handkerchief in front, with a white 
collar and white cuffs, and her hair dressed in this new fashion, 
fringe hidden and forehead displayed, no one could have taken 
her for the ragged workgirl of that very morning. 

“ Oh ! good gracious !” Melenda cried, when Valentine com- 
pleted her operations by bringing her the looking-glass. 

“ There,” said Valentine, “ you look like — like a professor 
of mathematics,” she added, with a little hesitation ; certainly 
Melenda in her new dress had the air of great capability. “ Ex- 
actly like a professor of mathematics, and you ought to be at 
Girton College. There isn’t a senior wrangler anywhere who 
could look so clever if he tried his utmost. Nobody would be- 
lieve that I had such a beautiful sister. Come, dear, we will go 
to Lotty.” 

“ Lotty, here is Melenda ; we are friends, as sisters ought to 
be. I hav^e been dressing her. Now you are not to talk, but 
you may whisper, if you please, that you are glad. What shall 
we do with her?” She went on talking because Melenda was 
blushing like a bride in her new character of Melenda the van- 
quished, and the tears were very near the surface. “ What shall 
we do with her now that she has no more work to do ? As for 
the old work, that is done with. There shall be no more but- 
ton-holes. First of all, Melenda has got to nurse you, Lotty, 
hasn’t she ? That will be work she will like, and perhaps now 
she is at your bedside, Lotty dear, you will get well soon. Oh ! 
and she has had no breakfast yet. Here is a box of sardines, 
and here is bread. I will make some fresh tea in a minute. 
Eat at least half the sardines before you say a single word : 
mother says you never did eat enough. Now, isn’t the flat ket- 
tle a capital thing? Here it is boiling already. Why, how in 
the world could Lotty. and I enjoy our breakfast and dinner 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


353 


when we thought of your bread and tea ? There ! Now I push 
the table closer, so that you needn’t move out of your chair, 
and oh ! Melenda, don’t begin to cry again, or we shall all of us — ” 

It is a pitiable thing that three young women cannot feel un- 
expectedly happy without crying over it. Perhaps, in Melenda’s 
case, the sight of the food which she had refused so often was 
an outward and visible sign of her changed frame of mind ; a 
holy sacrament and token of a solemn covenant, meaning recon- 
ciliation and affection. She was not one to go back upon her 
word ; she was vanquished ; her independence was gone. If 
Lizzie had been the girl concerned, we should have added that 
she was hungry. But with Melenda that circumstance mattered 
nothing. She was always hungry ; she had been hungry for eight 
years ; she was hungry day and night, and, except sometimes 
on Sunday, all the week through. However, she bowed her 
head and took her breakfast, and choked over it, while Valen- 
tine recovered slowly. 

No one, unfortunately, noticed Lizzie. 

She stood looking on with wonder and jealousy and a certain 
fear. Melenda was dressed like a young lady — a young lady of 
a shop. Her hair was brushed back, she was no longer a work- 
girl : no workgirl wears a white collar and cuffs, no workgirl was 
ever yet known to have her hair so dressed. Therefore, Lizzie, 
who had a quick, if not a logical mind, jumped at once to the 
conclusion that when Valentine went away — Melenda had al- 
ways insisted that she would soon go — she would be left be- 
hind, alone. No one wanted her; no one took any notice of 
her; she was not Valentine’s sister! And Lotty was going to 
die ; they would both be gone, and she would be left quite alone. 

She stepped out of the room, put on her ulster and her hat, 
and descended into the streets, her poor little brain in a tumult 
of envy, jealousy, and apprehension. 

“And now,” said Valentine, cheerfully, “you will stay and 
nurse Lotty, won’t you ? If there were anything you would rather 
do than that, you should do it. But I know there is nothing. 
’ Here is her medicine and the glass. Don’t let her talk too 
'much, but you may talk to her. Tell her about the man at the 
factory, the chief partner, you know, and how he pretended you 
could have sat down if you pleased, the old humbug ! Let her 
go to sleep if she can, and if she is thirsty, here are her grapes, 


354 


CHILDREN OP' GIDEON. 


and don’t go into your own room till I give you leave. Obey 
your sister, my dear !” 

Presently they heard footsteps on the stairs and in the othei 
room. But Melenda obeyed. The steps came and went, twice 
or three times. When, in the afternoon, Valentine took Melen- 
da back into her own room, the place was transformed : they 
had scrubbed the floor and cleaned the windows, washed the 
woodwork of the door and cupboard, they had pasted up the 
paper where it had fallen, they had put up a new blind and pret- 
ty curtain, they had brought new chairs — the old wooden bed 
was gone, and a new iron bedstead was in its place, with new 
sheets and blankets. There were flowers on the table — even the 
rusty grate was cleaned up and polished ; and a piece of carpet 
lay upon the boards, which were hardly yet dry. 

“There!” said Valentine; “this is an improvement, isn’t it, 
my dear ? The past is quite gone ; let us make the future as un- 
like it as we possibly can, so that we shall never be reminded of it.” 

“ But my work !” said Melenda, feebly. 

“ We shall find work. Do not be troubled about work.” 

Thus was Melenda subdued, dressed, and promoted. In the 
morning she was a young girl, in the afternoon she was a young 
person. Students of modern English will recognize the distinc- 
tion. The next step is, of course, that to the rank of a young 
lady, which is obtained by getting employment in a shop, or be- 
hind a bar, or in a show. There is not any other promotion 
open to working-women beyond and above this rank of young 
lady. They are never, never by any chance, made duchesses or 
countesses, or anything. This is, no doubt, a shameful wrong, 
but it is not yet felt ; and until an evil has become a crying evil, 
and a cry has become a bitter cry, and a thing that is felt and 
acknowledged to have become a disgrace to the country, we are 
resolved not to mend it or to mind it. 

In the evening, Melenda went out, as usual, by force of habit. 
The street market was in full swing ; the roadway as well as the 
pavement was crowded with people — women with baskets, men 
loitering along with pipes in their mouths, everybody making 
rough, good-natured jokes ; the boys whistling, the men at the 
barrows and stalls shouting ; everything going on just as usual. 
Strange 1 These things amused her no longer — and the people 
seemed not to know her ; they did not chaff her, nor did the 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


355 


boys push her, nor did the young men address her with words 
of impudent familiarity. Quite the contrary. They made way 
for her, as if she had been a young lady. And, for the first time 
in her life, she did not like the crowd. She left the street, there- 
fore, and went back to her own room. It looked so pretty, and 
so much like Valentine’s, especially when she lit the lamp with 
the colored shade, that she wondered how in the world she could 
have gone on so long in such a grimy den ! Thus easy is it 
to take an upward step. And may every young girl speedily 
become a young person, like Melenda, if not a young lady ! 

When Lotty fell asleep, Valentine came to talk with her. They 
had such a talk as made the girl’s heart glow within her. For 
Valentine spoke of a divine future, in which the women who 
work — yea, the very lowest and poorest, such as she and her 
friends had been — shall work in happiness, not in misery, for a 
wage which will keep them in comfort, and for hours which will 
give them leisure ; when there shall be no drilling, and driving, 
and swearing, and abusing ! And when there shall be time to 
look about and enjoy the world, while yet the pulse is strong 
and the blood runs swift ; and when women who work shall be 
able to read books as well, and to learn music, and to visit green 
fields and forests. 

“ My dear,” said Valentine, “ remember that the time must 
come. Perhaps we shall not see it, but let us help its coming 
while we live. The future belongs to those who work. But the 
girls cannot do much by themselves — they must have two things 
— the help of the working-men, and that of the women who do 
not work.” 

Then she accused herself, and her own hardness of heart — 
her apathy and selfishness, in having lived for one-and-twenty 
years without so much as thinking of the women who work, and, 
with herself, she accused all those women who do not work and 
do not think. “ Why,” she said, “ it is forty years since the 
most generous hearts in England showed a way, and preached it 
as if it were a new Gospel — yet I think it is only a part of the 
old ; the men have followed it, but not the women. Oh ! Melen- 
da,” she cried, “ it needs nothing but determination that the wom- 
en shall have the proceeds of their labor. And we are too lazy 
and too indifferent to care for them.” 

These were stirring words, such as Sam would use. Melenda 


356 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


understood very little of what they meant ; but they rang like 
words meant to put people in a rage, and therefore she liked 
them. 

“We will start our co-operative work here, Melenda. You 
shall be the forewoman, when you have learned a little more. 
Oh ! there will be plenty of work for you ; we shall work to- 
gether, and Claude will work with us. I shall want you to give 
me more than I can give you — all your time, all your cleverness, 
all your skill. Why, what can I give you, my dear, in return ? 
And then, when we are quite ready with our workshop and our 
girls, we shall go to the ladies, and tell them what we are going 
to do, and ask them if they will come to us instead of going to 
the shop ; and perhaps the shops will come to us instead of 
going to the factory. There must be some sympathy, somewhere 
in the world. But yet, after all that has been said and written 
about it, we seem only just beginning. Claude says that the 
history of all great things is the same : first it is the man who 
finds the truth and preaches it to deaf ears, and dies ; and then 
the little school of disciples which survives him and preserves 
his teaching ; and afterwards, the martyrs, and the preaching to 
the four winds of heaven, and to a great, stupid world, which 
will hear nothing, in spite of its long ears ; till, little by little, 
the words begin to take effect, and produce their fruits !” 

The doctrine of co-operation was diflScult for Melenda to 
grasp. She only understood, of work, that it must be “ given 
out” in the usual manner and by the customary machinery of 
clerks. There are many points of distinction between the mas- 
culine and the feminine mind : as that the woman is not happy 
unless she is quite sure and certain, and that the man gets along 
very comfortably under a sense of uncertainty ; also that any man 
who disagrees with a woman is, to her, an utterly contemptible 
person, while to a man, he is only a person with a curious mental 
twist. But the most distinctive of all these points is, that a 
woman never invents anything, or wants to change anything, or 
to improve any methods or w^ays of doing things. In order to 
illustrate this proposition, consider the common housemaid, the 
common household cook, and the household nursemaid ; the first 
of these has never been known to show the smallest invention 
in the laying of a fire, nor the second in constructing a dish, 
nor the third in dressing a baby. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


357 


Melenda, therefore, could not at first understand how the 
Golden Age may be restored. Few, indeed, are those whose 
imaginations can overstep the bounds of custom and sally forth 
into the world where women are actually paid for labor at a 
price which is not ruled by competition. In that world, if work 
is slack, there will be savings to fall back upon ; there shall be 
no grinders and drivers, and no woman shall be able to under- 
sell another. In that world will spring spontaneously all those 
beautiful virtues which can only flourish in physical comfort, suf- 
ficiency of food, and freedom from anxiety. And in that world 
the girls will refuse to marry early, and the men will not ask them. 

“ But they will always try to beat us down,” said Melenda, 
incredulous of any Golden Age. 


CHAPTER XXV. 
lizzie’s temptation. 

Lizzie went down into the streets unpcrceived, and with a 
sense of having been driven out. To such girls, who are per- 
fectly conscious of their poverty and their personal insignificance, 
there is no greater pleasure than “ notice,” and therefore no 
greater blow than neglect. She was jealous — she had taken 
Valentine’s dinners for nearly three months — she had never 
shown any pride about accepting presents; yet no fuss was 
made over her. And the moment Melenda gave in, there was 
as much rejoicing as there is over a sinner who repents. Melen- 
da, the penitent, was caressed and cried over, while no one took 
the least notice of herself. 

Besides, Melenda would not be a workgirl any longer, that 
was quite clear ; no workgirl could be dressed in that way, and 
Valentine was her sister. And Valentine was going away. 
Melenda always said that she would go away and forget them, 
and Melenda was never wrong. She said so herself, which 
proved the truth of the statement, and Lizzie always believed 
her ; well, then ; now that Valentine and her sister were friends, 
they would go away together. 

And' Lotty was going to die. 

Everybody was agreed that Lotty was going to die ; she knew 


358 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


it herself, and talked about it. It is strange bow quickly a girl 
may become accustomed to tbe contemplation of approaching 
death. The shadow hangs over the house ; everybody feels it, 
the sick and the well, the patient and the nurses. Day follows 
day, and the shadow remains or becomes deeper, but Azrael lin- 
gers, and when he comes at last, though his terrors have vanished, 
the surprise remains that the end should be so soon. 

Lotty would die. Lizzie knew that she might linger on. 
Would Valentine leave her and forget her? She ought to have 
perceived that this was impossible, but she did not perceive it. 
In her trouble and perplexity, the foolish girl pictured herself 
nursing her friend through her last days and then left alone, 
without even Melenda. What should she do? Who would 
find for her the work — hard work, but better than none — that 
Melenda had hitherto found ? How was she to live ? She had 
no other friends in the world — ^her father counting as nothing — 
except the two girls. They had been sufiicient for each other ; 
and now the little circle was going to be broken up. Then, 
again, who would share a room with her ? To the London work- 
girl, the thought of sleeping all alone in a room is full of terrors. 
If it was dreadful to think of the night, how much more dread- 
ful to think of the day ! For the last two months she had been 
as happy as the unwonted sense of physical satisfaction which 
comes of good and abundant food can make a girl ; it makes an 
enormous, an inconceivable difference. She knew, Melenda said 
so, that it would not last, but she was satisfied with the present. 
If you give ever so little happiness to these poor girls, starved 
of joy, they blossom like fiowers in sunshine. Now she was like 
the butterfly who feels the first chill winds of autumn and knows 
that summer and sunshine are over. To the butterfly there is 
no other chance or hope. For Lizzie there was what seemed to 
her ignorance not only a chance, but a certainty. It was a let- 
ter — the last of a dozen letters — received two days before. She 
had read it a dozen times at least and knew it now by heart, yet 
she read it again a dozen times. 

It was nothing less than a love letter. The man who wrote 
it had told her over and over again the same thing, yet words 
which are written seem to mean more than things which are 
said. He loved her, and he thought about her day and night. 
That was what the letter said. But he had told her so day after 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


359 


day, walking beside her ; be whispered it to her in the crowded 
streets ; he had told her so in the quiet side streets — there 
are side streets in Hoxton, where, but for the children, who do 
not count, and are besides sometimes in school, and the costers, 
who are not always bawling, there reigns a perennial silence ; he 
had taken her hand in his and kissed her, telling her so, not in 
a rough way as working-lads use, but daintily, and yet with a cu- 
rious coldness as if it weren’t quite true. It was not quite true, 
but he told her this because he wanted her ; and, besides, it was 
nearly true, for the girl had grown wonderfully pretty. He 
really did, as he told her, desire above all things to get that face 
and those beautiful eyes into his own studio. Lizzie knew very 
well that her face and her eyes were beautiful ; she did not 
know how much her beauty had grown since Valentine found 
out and provided for her an infallible remedy against the dread- 
ful disease known to girls as “ falling off.” The remedy consists 
solely of a good dinner taken daily, with a reasonable breakfast 
and a hearty supper. It is sovereign for coloring the cheeks, 
brightening the eyes, putting in dimples here and there, and fill- 
ing out the figure. So that Lizzie, who had been nothing but a 
thin, hollow-cheeked, and hollow-chested girl such as may be 
seen by thousands, only with large and beautiful eyes, was grown, 
in three short months, tall and well-proportioned, of good car- 
riage, with soft and dreamy limpid eyes, and a mouth that looked 
as if it might smile, but could seldom laugh, and a face of in- 
finite possibilities. In her speech, too, she had amended, being 
an imitative animal. But her ulster still covered a ragged frock, 
and her hat was shabby to the last degree. This lover of hers 
went on to assure her that he wanted to do nothing all his life 
but paint her face and eyes — the hands, he refiected, but did not 
say so, would have to be chosen from another model ; but he 
could not even begin until she made up her mind to give up her 
present life, and to trust herself entirely to him. Was she afraid 
of him ? Well, you see, Lizzie was afraid of him. He was a 
gentleman. Workgirls are horribly afraid of gentlemen, though 
they pass it off with cheek and chaff ; and though in every work- 
shop there is a tradition that once there was in it a girl as poor 
as themselves, whom a most beautiful gentleman, young, hand- 
some, and passing rich, picked out from all the world, and loved 
her better than he could have loved any number of countesses. 


360 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


and married her, and made her happy ever after. They tell the 
story, but they forget altogether how horribly dull it was for 
that girl after her marriage, with nothing to talk about, and none 
of her old friends, and the best company manners to he carefully 
maintained all day long. And, naturally, they do not understand 
how dull it was to the unfortunate young gentleman, and how 
devoutly he wished ever afterwards that he hadn’t done it, 
but had taken up instead with even the least desirable of the 
countesses. Lizzie, however, found this gentleman lover horribly 
dull company. She had nothing to say, absolutely nothing. 
She was afraid of him and of his cold, polished manner. 

Was she afraid to trust him? It was a most eloquent letter. 
That could hardly be the case ; she should have everything that 
the heart of a woman can desire ; she should lead the softest 
and easiest of lives ; her only duty should be to sit to him ; her 
days should be full of light, sunshine, and art. Here Lizzie felt 
that fear again ; for what was it that he was always talking about ? 
What was this precious art ? She knew nothing about art ; she 
cared less. One evening her friend took her to the Bethnal 
Green Museum, where she saw big vases and paintings. He 
said that was art, but it made her yawn. She would have to 
make him do without art. She should, the letter went on to 
assure her, be always dressed in the finest and the prettiest. 
Her hands, which were now spoiled by rough work — making 
button-holes in thick, coarse shirts does really pull the fingers 
into all sorts of shapes — should grow white and delicate as a 
beautiful woman’s hand should be. 

There was never yet devised by the subtlety of man or evil 
spirit a more terrible temptation than this which falls in the way 
of such girls as Lizzie. Fortunately for man, no such tempta- 
tion is possible for him, though he is often enough tempted to 
enact the part of the Serpent, else the lot of humanity would 
be far more wretched than it is. It is a temptation which as- 
sails a girl partly through her womanly pride of beauty and love 
of admiration; partly through her natural desire to escape 'the 
hard life which has been her lot and to enjoy the easy life of 
which she has only caught a glimpse ; and partly through her 
youthful desire to enjoy the sunshine, and to have a little play, 
and to gather some of the flowers of the spring. 

Even if Lizzie had been less ignorant ; even if she had known 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


361 


what would have followed ; even if she had seen, as in a map, 
the years of her life stretching out before her ; even if she had 
seen herself sinking deeper and deeper into misery — yet think 
what a temptation ! Even if she had been restrained by religion 
— ^hut she had no religion ; or by education — but she had not 
been educated ; or by love and respect for her friends — but 
Lotty was dying, and Melenda would be taken from her, and 
then she would have no friends. 

There is no such temptation in all the world, unless it be the 
temptation to steal for one’s starving children. Against a life 
of penury and privation, a lot of plenty ; against hard work, 
idleness and leisure; against the fierce anxieties and struggles 
of competition, ease and freedom from any anxiety. 

Alas ! Lizzie, left alone, was not strong enough for such a 
temptation. 

Let us bring out the woman who gives way to the Place of 
Stoning. Tear the veil from her face and make her stand before 
us trembling, crying, full of shame and terror and despair. The 
matrons, of course, are armed with the largest and the sharpest 
flints. But see — the men sit down and refuse to throw a single 
stone. Even the employers of women, and the manufacturers, 
and those who are governed by the law of elevenpence ha’penny, 
refuse. And the women are ashamed to begin. Then she 
steals away unharmed. And always in the city within its gray 
walls, almost in sight of the Place of Stoning, sit Lizzie’s friends, 
sewing button-holes as she did, making shirts, machining men’s 
coats, rolling cigars, fashioning match-boxes, sorting paper, con- 
fecting jam — all starving, all hollow-eyed, all sad of heart and 
heavy of limb, and all getting their elevenpence ha’penny a day, 
when they are in luck. And in the midst of all the Serpent, 
twined about the branches of the apple-tree, continually whis- 
pers to those who are young and pretty, and will listen, his soft 
and mellifluous promises. 

Lizzie suffered the temptation to assail her all day long. She 
wandered about the streets, now buffeted and beaten by the 
Tempter, who reviled her for her stupidity in resisting ; now con- 
templating with shrinking terror the picture which he held up 
before her imagination of a wretched girl alone in a wretched 
room, with no work, no money, no food, no friends, no light, 
alone in the world. How could she go on living so ? 

16 


362 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


“ Why,” said the Tempter. It was not the Serpent actually 
visible, hut a memory of certain words which had been said to 
her by the man who followed her and wrote to her those letters. 
“ Why, what do you know in this God-forgotten place of what 
is done at the other end of the town ? There are girls, not half 
so pretty as you, whose photographs are sold in every shop and 
put up in every window. They can get what they please to ask 
at any theatre, just for going on the stage to be looked at. Why, 
you want nothing hut a little better dress to outshine them 
all.” 

Then she remembered how he took her into one of the little 
draper’s shops, of which there are so many everywhere, and 
picked out a bright-colored kerchief, one of the cheap things 
in jute which look so pretty. “ Take off your hat,” he said. 

She took it off, and with a dexterous hand, which showed 
practice upon more than the mere lay figure, he twisted the 
kerchief round her neck and over her shapely head, so as to 
let the curls of her fringe play about the folds and to set off 
the singular beauty of her eyes with a frame rich and full of 
color. Look,” he said, showing her the looking-glass. Then 
he took off the thing. “ Put on your hat. Look now.” 

She shuddered, because it seemed to her as if all her beauty 
lay in the crimson handkerchief. 

Don’t think,” he went on, outside the shop — “ don’t think 
that I shall let you go upon the stage. I shall keep you all to 
myself. The world shall only see you in the exhibition of my 
picture. I can wait for you a little. But don’t try my patience 
too long. ^ As soon as you are tired of privation and toil, come 
to me.” 

She ought to have put the thought behind her ; it should 
have been treated as a thing impossible to be even considered. 
But this she did not do. 

Late in the afternoon she went into a small stationer’s shop, 
the place where her letters were received for her, the only let- 
ters she ever had from any one. Her mind was made up. She 
would struggle no longer. After all, she would be better off 
than some, because he was a gentleman. 

For a penny she bought a piece of note-paper and an envel- 
ope, the shop-woman kindly allowing her to use the counter and 
her own pen and ink for nothing. Here she wrote a letter in 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


363 


reply. It was the first time she had ever answered her letters, 
which always proposed a meeting, so that they could be an- 
swered by word of mouth, and her answer hitherto had always 
been a hesitating ‘ No.’ It was a very short letter, because she 
had never written a letter before in all her life, and, perhaps, 
she will never write another. It was also spelled in a manner 
disapproved by the great Butter, and disallowed at spelling- 
bees, but the spelling we may alter. 

“ Lotty,” she said, “ is going to die. Melenda is going to be 
took away. She’s got a new frock, and her fringe is brushed 
back. So I shall be all alone. I can’t stay all alone. So I 
will come to you to-morrow. Tell me where you will meet 
me. — Your friend, Lizzie.” 

She addressed and posted the letter — this took her last penny. 
It was then two o’clock. He would get it in two or three hours. 
She would have an answer the next morning. Now, when she 
had irretrievably promised this thing, because nothing is so 
hopelessly past recall as a letter dropped in a post-ofiice, she 
felt strangely agitated. She was afraid to go home. Like Eve, 
she wanted to hide herself. She had no more money, and was 
getting horribly hungry, but she was afraid to go home. Her 
eyes, she thought, would tell the tale of what she had promised. 
They would guess it from her cheeks, which were burning. If 
they guessed it, what would they say ? If they actually found 
it out, how would Melenda rage, and how would Lotty cry, and 
how would Valentine look at her with grave eyes, full of pity 
and of wonder, under which she would sink to the earth in 
shame ? When principle and religion fail, you see, the opinion 
of one’s friends may still be useful. 

It was quite late, nearly eleven o’clock, when she got home. 
Her father’s candle was burning, and she opened the door and 
looked in. He was sitting in his chair, motionless and ab- 
stracted, as he sat every night. 

“ Can I do anything for you, father ?” she asked. It would 
be the last time she would ever do anything for him. 

“ Is that you, Lizzie ?” he replied, shaking his head as one 
who rouses himself. “ No, my dear, thank you. Why should 
you do anything for me ? I’ve never done anything for you, 
have I ? And now, I never shall. You ought to have had a 
better father, child I” 


364 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


“ Never mind, dad ; it isn’t your fault that you’re so dread* 
ful poor.” 

“It is my own fault, I suppose, that I have a daughter to 
share my poverty. Never mind, child. You have found a 
friend at last.” 

“If you mean Valentine, then you’re wrong. She’s going 
away. She’s going to take Melenda with her, and Lotty’s got 
to die.” 

“ If she is going away, she will come back. She has been 
here this evening. You will have no more trouble, Lizzie. As 
for me — the bishop is very ill. His sons are sent for. I do 
not know what will happen ; but you can do better without me. 
There will be no more slavery for you, child.” 

There would not, she thought ; but what he meant she knew not. 

“ The Lord,” he went on, “ cursed mankind with the curse of 
labor ; the profit of the earth is for all. The Preacher said it. 
Yet there is the work of the wicked and the work of the just. 
And there is a vanity, saith the Preacher, that is done upon the 
earth ; but there be just men to whom it happeneth according 
to the work of the wicked. That was not quite your father’s 
unhappy case, my daughter, but something like it. And as for 
you, your toil has been for the wicked man. Henceforth it 
shall be for the righteous woman. That will be your happiness.” 

She could not understand one word. It was his wont to speak 
in this kind of allegory, and generally she did not try to under- 
stand. But this evening, of all evenings, after what she had 
done and promised, what did he mean ? 

“ Never mind the Preacher, father. What do you mean ?” 

“ She will tell you herself. Go, child. I told you that the 
bishop is dangerously ill.” 

Lizzie hesitated. It was the last time that she would see her 
father. She felt sorry for him, with his long gray hair, and 
feeble limbs, and his dire poverty. She lingered a moment. It 
was cruel to leave him, but she could do nothing for him, nor 
he for her. She shut the door and went up-stairs. Melenda 
was in the room. Gracious ! — what had happened ? She was 
reading a book, rather ostentatiously, perhaps, but it was the 
first time for eight years, and Melenda felt that the thing gave 
her dignity ; and by the light of a most beautiful lamp covered 
with a most beautiful red-colored shade ; and there were white 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


365 


curtains to the windows, and a carpet on the floor, and a bright 
new bedstead. Lizzie gasped : “ What does it mean, Melenda ?” 

“ Lizzie,” said Melenda, who was not at all the kind of girl 
to practise virtue passively, and was an ardent missionary, what- 
ever views she might adopt — “ Lizzie, it’s time you cured your- 
self of walking the streets till midnight. It isn’t respectable.” 

“ Well, Melenda, only last night you were out yourself. What’s 
up now? You and me are respectable, I suppose, though you 
have combed back your fringe. What’s come to the room ?” • 

“She gave us all these things. They are all from her, and 
they’re all for you and me, Liz. I’m not ashamed any more to 
take her presents, and I don’t care if you do throw them in my 
teeth, after all I’ve said. I’ve given in. They’re for you and 
me. Everything’s new, even new sheets to the bed.” 

“ For you and me ? Isn’t she going away then ?” 

“ Yes, she’s going away in a day or two.” 

“ And ain’t you going with her ?” 

“ No, you and I are going to stay and nurse Lotty. The 
doctor says as soon as possible she’s to go to the Isle of Wight, 
he says, and she may last through the winter, with care, he says. 
You and me will take care of her.” 

“ And where’s the money and the work to come from ?” 

“ She’ll find the money and the work too. Oh, Liz ! such a 
fool I’ve been! She’s full of thought for us ; she’s the best girl 
in the world ! Sam says the other is Polly, because she’s like 
Joe’s Rhoder. But I don’t care — I shall never care about the 
other — the one who cried 1” 

“ It’s all for you — she doesn’t care about me.” 

“ Yes, she. does, she cares as much for you as for me, which 
shows that she can’t be Polly. Don’t get jealous, Liz, there’s 
a good girl. Let’s be happy while we can, and have no more 
tempers 1 I know I have a bad temper — but then we’ve all been 
so hungry, and Lotty’s been so bad — poor Lotty 1” 

She paused and wiped away a tear. 

“ She’s got a new frock for you, Liz. She’s been talking 
about you all the afternoon, and after tea she took a cup down 
to your father, with a plate of meat, and talked with him, and 
told him what she was going to do for you — and came up-stairs 
crying ! Why, you didn’t think we should go away and leave 
you all alone, did you, Liz ? Well ! I wouldn’t have thought 

A A 


306 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


that bad of you — never — I wouldn’t ! You know she’s coming 
back again, and then we are going to set to work — somehow — 
to make a business like the men, or co-operate somehow — I don’t 
know how. It’s the ladies themselves who are going to manage 
it. She says if the ladies had made up their minds years ago, 
we should all have been paid fair wages by this time. But 
they’ll do it now, or else she’ll know the reason why ; and there’s 
to be no more drilling, and plenty of work for everybody, and 
good wages — that’s what she says.” It was not exactly what 
she said, but it was near enough. “ Not,” said Melenda, de- 
scending again from the imaginative to the practical, “ not but 
what they’ll go on trying to beat us down, if they can.” 

Lizzie made no reply, but proceeded to go to bed. And then, 
whether through the strangeness of the new bed, or her hungry 
condition — for she had eaten nothing since breakfast — or the 
discovery that she had been wrong in her assumption, she lay 
awake half the night ; and when she fell asleep, it was only to 
dream that Melenda was pursuing her with a long stick in her 
hand and an infuriated countenance — and that Lotty was weep- 
ing, and Valentine pointing the finger of scorn, and all Ivy Lane 
looking on, while they cast her out. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

NO DEFENCE. 

^‘This,” said Valentine, next morning, “is our last day but 
one together.” They were all at breakfast — Melenda with them 
for the first time. 

“ But you won’t be gone long,” said Melenda. 

“ No ; I shall come to see you nearly every day, until I come 
to live with you again.” 

There was something the matter this morning with Lizzie. 
She would eat nothing, and, when Valentine said she was coming 
back again, she took up her cup of tea and choked over it, which 
was strange, because Valentine’s departure for two or three days 
hardly seemed to offer an adequate cause for this emotion. 

“ I do not know when I shall be able to live here altogether, 
but that is what I shall try to do. Then we will get more ladies 


CfHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


367 


to come here, and we will make our own society in Hoxton. 
Instead of everybody living together, all in one part of town, 
we ought to separate, and make settlements in different parts 
of London. Then there would be a chance for better things, 
and art, perhaps, and culture.” Sometimes Valentine would 
talk in this unintelligible fashion, but the girls listened without 
laughing at her, which would have been rude, or questioning 
her, which would have been uninteresting. As for you, Lotty 
dear, I shall come to see you as often as I can. I am only going 
to Park Lane, which is not more than two or three miles from 
here, though they think it is two or three hundred miles by dis- 
tance and several centuries by time. But then they are dread- 
fully ignorant in Park Lane.” 

“ Why didn’t you tell me yesterday ?” cried Lizzie, with a 
sudden outburst of passion. “ Oh, if you’d only told me yes- 
terday morning !” 

“ My dear child, does it matter much ? I am very sorry, if it 
does matter, that I did not tell you yesterday.” 

“ If you’d only told me !” she repeated ; if you’d only told 
me !” What was the matter with the child ? 

“ Since it is the last day but one, and to-morrow I shall have 
a great deal to do, and Lotty has had a good night, cannot we 
go somewhere together? Melenda can leave Liz to look after 
Lotty. We will go to Tottenham first, and spend the day with 
mother, if you like, and look at green fields and the River Lea — 
shall we ?” 

“ I can’t look after Lotty,” said Liz, with burning cheeks. 

Oh, you mustn’t go away and leave Lotty by herself.” 

Where are you going, then ?” 

“ I’m going — I don’t know where I am going !” 

She sprang to her feet and ran into the other room. 

“ Stay here, Melenda dear,” said Valentine. She remembered 
the doctor’s warning, and ran after the girl. Lizzie !” she cried, 
catching her by the arm, “ you must tell me what you mean — 
where are you going? Why can you not look after Lotty? 
Does Lotty know why?” 

“ No, no, you mustn’t tell Lotty ; please don’t never tell her !” 

“ Does your father know ?” 

“ He won’t ask after me — he won’t mis&me. Don’t tell father. 
I must go !” 


368 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Then I shall go with you ; I shall not let you go out of my 
sight all day long.” 

Lizzie sat down. The eyes that she feared were upon her, and, 
as she expected, they were full of grave reproach. 

“ Where are you going, Lizzie ?” 

“ I thought I was to be forgotten and left alone. What is it 
to you? I ain’t your sister, like Melenda. You don’t care for 
me like you do for Lotty. If I’m left alone, with no work, I 
shall starve. Let me go ; it’s nothing to you.” 

“ It is everything to me, Lizzie. Do you think we do not care 
for you ? Why, after all these years, when you have worked with 
Melenda and Lotty ever since you were a child, do you think 
they do not care for you? Tell me, what folly is it that you 
have committed?” 

Lizzie hung her head guiltily. 

“ I know that you have been seen more than once walking 
with a gentleman. What did he say to you ?” 

“ He wanted me to go away and be his model. He wants to 
paint my face and eyes. Well, then — what’s the harm?” 

“ If there is no harm, why didn’t he come here and ask you 
openly, before Melenda and Lotty ?” 

“ Oh !” the girl began to cry. “ I said I couldn’t never leave 
Lotty and Melenda. I told him so twenty times — I told him so ; 
but he wouldn’t take ‘ no ’ for his answer. And he knew where 
to meet me, and sometimes, before you came, when I was dread- 
ful hungry, he’d give me a chop for dinner. But I wouldn’t take 
his money. Oh ! don’t tell Melenda ; I think she’d beat me, 
she’d be in such a rage. And don’t tell Lotty, because she’d 
cry.” 

“ Lizzie, you’ve been worse than foolish ! But there is some- 
thing more to tell.” 

She felt those eyes, greatly superior, upon her, and she con- 
fessed the whole. 

“ Then he began to write letters to me. Oh ! beautiful letters ; 
and the day before yesterday there came another ; here it is.” 

She drew forth the letter, of which we know, from her pocket 
and gave it to Valentine. 

“ Am I to read it?” She opened and read it through. “ My 
dear, it is the letter of a bad man — a wicked and deceitful man. 
What he says is false. It is false that you are the most beauti- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


369 


ful girl in tlie world. Oh, what nonsense ! there are hundreds 
and thousands prettier than you in this place only. It is most 
wicked to flatter a girl in this extravagant way. And how can 
he love you ? He calls himself a gentleman, I suppose ; he is a 
man of education ; and you, my poor child — what do you know, 
and how could you talk with a gentleman so that he should pre- 
tend to fall in love with you V 

It will be remarked that Valentine had not yet learned every- 
thing ; and that, as regards the science and practice of love, she 
was still in that happy state of ignorance where it is believed 
and accepted as a maxim that a gentleman cannot possibly fall 
in love with a girl below himself in the social scale. Most young 
ladies believe this, even after their brothers have got engaged to 
barmaids. 

“ You don’t love him, Lizzie ? You can’t love a man, you know, 
unless you are his equal and can understand him.” Which also 
proved that she was as yet inexperienced in the ways of love and 
in the workings of the human heart, which does sometimes re- 
fuse, if history hath not lied, to recognize the artificial distinc- 
tions of birth, wealth, and education. 

“You don’t love this man,” Valentine repeated. 

“ I don’t know. I am afraid of him.” 

This confession was really, though Valentine did not know it, 
a most extraordinary and almost unique instance of a girl in Liz- 
zie’s class being able to explain or disclose her mind at all. Most 
girls are absolutely unable to detach even one of the fine, con- 
fused variety of feelings which agitate their minds when a wooer 
comes to them. Lizzie was flattered by the praise of her beauty ; 
she was honored by the admiration of a gentleman ; she was 
tempted by the offer of the “ easy life she knew that her lover 
was handsome, well-dressed, and of good manners. But she was 
afraid of him. I suppose the reason why she confessed that fact 
to Valentine was that fear, of all the contending forces in her 
brain, was the strongest. “ I’m afraid of him.” 

“ Why, then, there is not much harm done,” said Valentine, 
with a sigh of relief ; “ if you are afraid of a man you cannot 
love him. If a girl loves a man,” she went on, like the philoso- 
pher on the seashore, picking up shells and feeling after knowl- 
edge in the unscientific, pre-Baconian method ; that is, without 
the making of experiments — “if a girl loves a man, I suppose 
16 ^ 


3V0 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


she is attracted by bim ; sbe cannot, certainly, be afraid of bim ; 
sbe must long to talk with bim, and to bear bim talk. Do you 
long to talk to this man ?” 

“ No ; I can’t understand wbat be says. It is all about art, 
and wbat people should do for art. He says we must all give 
ourselves to art — I don’t know wbat be means, but be is always 
saying it.” 

“ Then of course you are not in love ! Well, go on. You have 
something more to tell me. Where were you going just now ?” 

“ I thought you were going away with Melenda, and Lotty 
was dying, and I should be alone. I couldn’t live all by myself, 
and there is no work. 

“Yes, my dear, you were very foolish. You ought to have 
trusted your friends. But you know better now. Now go on, 
and tell me all.” 

“ I’ll tell you, only don’t tell Melenda and Lotty — I’m afraid 
you will tell them.” 

“ No ; I will not let them know if it can possibly be avoided. 
But you must tell me the whole truth.” 

Confession is said to bring, in some troubles, the greatest relief 
possible,especially to the feminine mind. But as yet the Apos- 
tle’s injunction has never been perfectly carried out, only par- 
tially even by the Wesleyan Methodists, who, I believe, are sup- 
posed to confess to one another in open meeting of the church 
members — but I doubt the fulness and reality of their confes- 
sions. As for confession in the ecclesiastical way, in a hole and 
corner in the dark, and through a square aperture in the wall, and 
to an unknown man beyond, that, to an outside heretic, does not 
seem to meet the apostolic precept. Lizzie found in full con- 
fession the greatest relief. She poured out the whole story, down 
to the very words of his letters. Besides, she was in a great fear 
that the gentleman would make her keep her promise, even if he 
had to drag her away ; and Valentine was like a strong fortress 
of protection. 

“ And he’ll be waiting for me — and perhaps he’ll come to fetch 
me — and what shall I do ? And what will Melenda say ?” 

“ Poor child,” said Valentine. “ It was a dreadful temptation, 
my dear. Never tell anybody this — keep it buried and forgotten. 
I will help you through. But never, never speak to a gentleman 
again.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


371 


They went together to the stationer’s shop, where the letter 
was lying for Lizzie. Valentine opened it. First there was a 
bank-note for five pounds in it, and then a brief letter, directing 
the girl to buy, with the money enclosed, a few necessary things, 
and to meet the writer at the gates of St. John’s Church that 
morning at twelve. Valentine kept the greater part of the letter 
to herself, because it contained references to beautiful eyes, 
which might have weakened Lizzie’s repentance. After a sur- 
feit of sw^eets, more sugar is undesirable. There were also ex- 
pressions of contempt for her recent work, which were as well 
left unsaid. Then Valentine began to consider what was best to 
be done. 

“ Come home with me,” she said ; “ let me bring you safe 
home first. My dear, you are like a deer escaped from the 
eagle’s clutches, or a lamb from the wolf. He would have torn 
you to pieces with his cruel teeth. Hold my hand tight, you 
poor, silly child, and thank God that you told me everything and 
were stopped in time !” 

Lizzie made no reply, and they walked back hand in hand, and 
both with hanging head and fiaming cheeks, for the cloud or 
shadow of shame was upon both their hearts, and one of them 
thought that her dream was come true — that the very children 
of Ivy Lane were going to call out upon her, and that Melenda 
was waiting for her with wrathful eyes and scornful words and 
cruel blows. 

“ Come in here,” said Valentine, as they entered the house ; 
“ come into your father’s room. It is a wretched room, is it 
not? He is miserably poor. You would have left him to his 
fate, in his poverty and his old age, without one friend to help 
him and not one to love him and to console him. He is ill — - 
any sudden excitement or sorrow will kill him. If he were to 
learn that you had left him and run away to strangers, and to 
your own ruin, he would most likely die from the shock. You 
would have killed him ! From this you have been saved — 

“ Up-stairs, Lotty is on her death-bed. The end may come to 
her any day. If she were to learn that you had left her without a 
word of farewell, and run away, the end would come very quickly. 
You would have killed her, too. From this you have been saved !” 


Let us leave them together. 


372 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


We generally think that the priest, because he hears no end 
of confessions, and knows such a quantity of wickedness, makes 
the best admonisher unto godliness. In the same way, the so- 
licitor, who becomes intimately acquainted with all possible forms 
of roguery, or the police magistrate, or the schoolmaster, or the 
policeman himself, or even the professor of roguery standing in 
a neat uniform at the treadmill, ought to he good admonishers. 
For my own part I think that the grave and serious remon- 
strance, with womanly tears and sympathy and kisses, of an in- 
nocent girl might, with such a girl as Lizzie, be worth the admo- 
nitions of a hundred priests. And it is to he hoped that the 
words which poor Lizzie heard that day may sink into her heart 
and bring forth fruits of righteousness. 

It was an hour later when Valentine and Lizzie went up-stairs. 
There were signs of recent tears in Valentine’s eyes, and Lizzie 
was crying and sobbing still. 

“ Oh, Lotty !” she cried, throwing herself upon her knees and 
clasping her hands— “ But you must never know — ” 

“ This foolish girl,” said Valentine, “ actually believed that we 
were going to leave her all alone here ! I have been scolding 
her ; but we must forgive her, because she is so sorry for her 
want of confidence. Melenda, dear, don’t say a word to her 
about it. Lotty, you will forgive her, won’t you? And you 
must keep her here all day — it shall be her turn to nurse you.” 

At twelve o’clock Valentine kept Lizzie’s appointment for her. 
She had no other directions than to meet an unknown gentleman 
at the gates of St. John’s Church at noon. This, however, was 
most likely a sufficient indication, because gentlemen are not com- 
mon in the streets of Hoxton at any hour, and a gentleman wait- 
ing about a street corner is easily distinguished. She arrived at 
the try sting-place a few minutes after the hour, and there was 
already a gentleman standing on the broad pavement, outside the 
railings. A man, at least, was there, dressed like a gentleman. 
He was, no doubt, the wretch who had written those letters. 
There could not be two gentlemen, each with an appointment 
for the same time, in the same place — and in such a place ! A 
hansom cab was waiting close by, evidently for him and for his 
victim ! 

The girl’s heart beat fast. She would have liked to say some- 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


373 


thing, but she could not trust herself. The man was looking in 
the opposite direction, but he turned as she neared him. Good 
heavens ! It was none other than Mr. Conyers. 

“ You !” she cried. 

“ Miss Valentine !” 

“ You ? Oh ! is it possible ?” 

She remembered now that she had met him once before, 
nearly on the same spot. He was confused then ; he looked 
more confused now. 

She had no doubt, not the least doubt, that he was the man 
whom she had come to find. 

“ You are waiting for some one,” she said. “ You have got 
a cab waiting, too !” 

He made no reply. 

“ You are waiting for my friend Lizzie. I have brought you 
back the bank-note which you sent her. She will not keep the 
appointment.” 

He took the bank-note. 

“ I asked her,” he said, “ to let me paint her face.” 

“I have read the letters,” Valentine replied, “in which you 
asked her. They are in my hands. Go — ” 

Mr. Conyers was a man of considerable impudence ; but there 
are times when the most brazen impudence must break down. 
Ho living man, for instance, could stand unmoved before the 
scorn unutterable, the condemnation unpitying, of a young lady 
for such a thing as this man had attempted. He made no reply. 
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could be said. She 
had read his letters. 

“ Go,” said Valentine, pointing to the cab. 

He turned and got into his cab without a word of explanation 
or excuse. She had read his letters ! After that, what room was 
there for defence ?” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

ALICIA. 

“ To Russell Square,” he shouted to the driver. 

It was in Russell Square that Alicia lived, in one of the largest 
and finest houses, full of the most solid furniture, and crammed 


374 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


with pictures — pictures in every room and on every wall, as one 
might expect of one who was the widow of a dealer in pictures. 
Jack Conyers hated the house, and the furniture, and the pict- 
ures, because they all belonged, somehow, to the life from which 
he had vainly attempted to escape. Those game and fruit pieces 
in the dining-room, those landscapes in the drawing-room, those 
portraits — not family portraits — on the stairs, the massive furni- 
ture, all alike spoke of money and of trade, and he desired to be- 
long to the world of money without trade. 

Well, that was over now ; the morning’s work had effectually 
demolished any chance of that ; he must think about it no more. 

And after making everything ready for the grand coup ! Violet 
was certainly Beatrice. He had established, in his own mind, 
so many points of resemblance between her and the portraits of 
Sir Lancelot, and so many between Valentine and Claude, that 
he had no doubt at all on the subject. And now to be caught, 
actually caught, like an offending school-boy, by one of the two 
girls concerned, in such a business as a love affair with a work- 
girl — a thing so unworthy of a man of light and sweetness and 
culture ; so common, so Philistine, so vulgar, and so low ! And 
his very letters read — the thought of those letters made his 
cheeks to flame and his nose to feel hot. And that the thing 
should be discovered on the eve of his great coup, only three 
days before the disclosure of the secret ! But the damning 
thing was the fact of the letters — Valentine said that she had 
read all his letters. If it had not been for the letters he would 
have brazened it out. What business had she to read letters not 
addressed to herself ? But women have no honor. They were, 
in fact, letters of the kind which cannot possibly be explained 
away, or forgotten, or forgiven — letters to a common working- 
girl, dressed in a shabby old ulster and ragged frock, who called 
him “ Sir,” unless she plucked up courage to utter some delicate 
street joke, some cry of the gutter. Now, there is this curious 
and dangerous quality about such letters, that, whether a man 
addresses himself by love-letter to a shirtmaker or to a countess, 
incontinently he gets carried away by the enthusiasm of beauty 
and the magic of imagination, and becomes extravagant. There- 
fore, Jack’s letters to poor Lizzie might have been written to 
Violet, so high pitched and so serious they were. And, apart 
from this other side of the matter, which was bad enough in all 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


375 


conscience, this unhappy young man felt that he had made him- 
self ridiculous. No doubt Valentine would show those letters 
about. 

A good morning’s work. The best house on his list closed to 
him. Worst of all, if Alicia heard of it most likely she would 
be lost to him as well. 

Alicia was out. Jack waited for her ; and while he waited he 
wrote a short note to Lady Mildred. It was not a pleasant note 
to write ; but it was better to withdraw of one’s own accord than 
to be kicked down-stairs. 

“ Dear Lady Mildred ” (he said), — “ When I spoke to you at Ilfracombe, 
and opened, as I then thought, my whole heart to you, I did not know, nor 
could I possibly foretell, that I had made the most terrible mistake. This is 
the case, however, and I have no other hope than to throw myself on your 
mercy and ask for forgiveness. 

“ I have long loved another lady, and I have now learned that in certain 
conclusions I had too rashly drawn, concerning her affections, I was wrong. 
Fortunately, I have said nothing to Miss Violet on which I can reproach my- 
self. Again I ask your indulgence, and remain, dear Lady Mildred, yours 
very sincerely, John Conyers.” 

Not a pleasing letter to write. But it bad to be done. Better 
to preserve the appearance of walking out than to be turned out. 
I do not think it likely, however, that he will ever call upon Lady 
Mildred again ! 

Alicia returned rather late, and hungry for luncheon. She was 
a lady who was always hungry for luncheon. 

“You here. Jack? I expected you about this time. Let us 
have lunch, my dear boy — ^you’ve got such a long face that I 
know exactly what you’ve come to say. You shall have some 
fizz, to give you Dutch courage ! Don’t be more ceremonious 
than is necessary. I should like it best if you would just say, 
‘ Alicia, my dear, I’ve concluded to come down.’ But I suppose 
that won’t do for you — it isn’t grand enough ?” 

They had luncheon together at the great mahogany table, 
among the pictures of game and fruit. How in the world can a 
man ever become a leader of art, culture, and the higher criticism, 
who sits daily among these pictures, and has married the widow 
of a picture-dealer ? 

“ Now, Jack,” said the widow, “ will you have a cigarette, or 
will you talk without tobacco ? I don’t mind, you know ?” 

Jack proceeded, with some solemnity, to put his case in the 


376 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


most favorable light possible. He said, but the lady laughed 
aloud while he spoke, that he must appear to have acted an un- 
worthy part ; he could not, in fact, understand his own blindness ; 
for three months he had been as one who struggles against the 
overpowering force of conviction ; he had tried to persuade him- 
self that his happiness lay elsewhere. “ This illusion,” he con- 
cluded, very gravely, “this illusion, Alicia, has now been dispelled.” 

“ Has the young lady refused you, then ?” 

“ No ! My proposal for the young lady has been made — I con- 
fess it — and it lies still in her mother’s hands. She is the daugh- 
ter and heiress, Alicia, of the late Sir Lancelot Eldridge — ” 

“What does it mean, then. Jack ?” 

“ It means, Alicia, that I have returned to my allegiance, to my 
first love — ” 

“ Oh !” She received the information doubtfully, because 
there was a lack of ardor in the bearing of her suitor. His 
words were ardent, but his manner was cold. 

“ I have reason to believe that the kindness of Lady Mildred 
might — I only say might, Alicia, because I do not venture to 
claim any positive knowledge as to the young lady’s feelings — 
might be equalled by the kindness of her daughter — ” 

“ Oh !” 

“ I have, however, written to Lady Mildred ; you shall see the 
letter, here it is.” He drew it forth and gave it to her. “You 
see, it is a free withdrawal — ” 

“ Jack !” She read the letter quickly, and kept it. “ Are you 
quite, quite straight with me ?” 

“ Perfectly, Alicia. I have never been anything but straight 
with you.” 

“ And it isn’t money ?” 

“You mean that I have not much left. That is quite true ; I have 
nothing to conceal from you. But it isn’t money. There is plenty, 
at all events, in that young lady’s hands, far more than there is in 
yours. But it isn’t money, Alicia ; I am not so mercenary as you 
think, and I have given up this other girl wholly for your sake. For- 
give me, Alicia ! Perhaps, some day, you will take pride in me — ” 

She laughed gently. “ Ah, Jack ! you always said that. Well, 
let me see. I know where you were. Down at the seaside with 
one of those girls — ” 

“ The daughter and heiress — 


CHILDREN OP GIBBON. 


377 


“ Trying to get round her. Then you came back to town. I 
thought you were afraid of catching the wrong one, which would 
be catching a crab, wouldn’t it ?” 

“ I have always known which is the real daughter — ” 

“ Have you ? I thought nobody knew. Well, now, I will post 
this letter myself, to prevent accidents. Jack,” she said, looking 
straight in his face, “ there was once a man like you, with no money 
of his own, you know, who married a woman with a tolerably good 
fortune. He thought, as soon as he was married, that he could do 
what he liked, and so he began to carry on shameful, as if his wife 
hadn’t common feelings. She let him have his head for a bit, and 
then, when he’d quite got accustomed to the best of everything and 
couldn’t live without it, she turned him into the street, where there 
is no claret and no champagne. So that poor man caught a Tar- 
tar, didn’t he ?” 

“ What has that to do with me ?” 

“ Oh ! nothing, of course ; and I’m sure you’ll never give me 
cause to allude again to that unfortunate creature, who now walks 
the streets between two pretty boards ! I don’t mind the portraits 
of the models — your three beautiful conquests, you know — and I 
don’t care a bit about Miss Eldridge, because I am quite certain 
she wouldn’t have had you. But there is something worse than 
either. There is a certain little girl at Hoxton, the workgirl. Jack.” 
He started and turned pale. What did she know ? “ You’ve been 
seen walking with her ; not once, but half a dozen times. Now, 
you know, I am not going to stand that ! It isn’t likely.” 

“ She was going to let me paint her face, Alicia — ” 

“ Well, you’ll paint somebody else’s face — your own, if you like ; 
it’s red enough now. No, Jack, no more visits to Hoxton, if you 
please. I wonder if it is reckoned good form for a gentleman — 
your father and mine weren’t gentlemen, but they wouldn’t have 
done that — to meet a ragged little creature like that, in her dinner- 
hour, and turn her silly head with nonsense ? I wonder what men 
are made of ? You told her she was pretty, I suppose ?” 

“ I am sure I don’t want to meet the girl any more. These 
girls, Alicia — don’t imagine that I was really turning the girl’s 
head with any nonsense — often require a great deal of persuasion 
before they will consent to sit — ” 

“ I dare say,” she replied, with an incredulous sniff. “ Well, 
Jack, I’m a fool to forgive you, and I sha’n’t trust you too much, 


378 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


Most women would give you up altogether after finding out all 
I’ve found out. But when we’re married — mind — You may 
kiss me again, if you like.” 

Jack obeyed her, but not as if he liked it much. 

“ As for playing the distinguished man, 1 think you will find 
it a precious deal easier in Russell Square with me than in Park 
Lane with your Eldridges ! We’re an easy-going lot, me and my 
friends, and we will just take you on your own estimate, however 
big it is ; and if you like to talk art and aesthetics when my friends 
come to dinner, why this is just the house to talk it in. Wasn’t 
all the money made out of art ? I don’t say we shall understand 
you, but that doesn’t matter a bit, and they’ll think all the better 
of you if they don’t, particularly as they all knew your poor father ! 
You’ll look well, and you’ll talk well, and you’ll be very careful, 
my dear boy, very careful indeed, not to turn up your distinguished 
nose at my friends because there may be a letter wanting here and 
there, or because their money, like mine, was made in the shop. 
If you do, there will be pepper. As for your father — ” 

“ That is quite enough, Alicia — we understand each other thor- 
oughly. We shall make ourselves perfectly happy, and you shall 
have your own way in everything.” 

“ I mean to. Jack. As for getting into society, I am not anx- 
ious to know people who despise honest trade. But if you like 
to bring them here, you can. They won’t dare to show their 
contempt for the shop, I think, in my house. If they do — but 
never mind, my dear Jack, you are going to lead the most com- 
fortable life in the whole world. And you don’t deserve it a 
bit ; and I shall tell all my friends — who wouldn’t tell a fib for 
the man she loves ? — that you are really almost as clever and dis- 
tinguished as you look !” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

“return, o shulamite!” 

So, at last, dawned the morning of Valentine’s last day in Hox- 
ton — the last day comes, if one waits long enough, of everything. 

Her last day. She awoke before daybreak, and watched how 
the dawn — a pretty sight — gradually revealed in all their beauty 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


379 


the board school, and the-bach yards, and the courts commanded 
by her window. There were no larks singing in the sky or swal- 
lows flying about the eaves to welcome the sun, perhaps because 
the season w^as too late for larks and swallows ; nor was there 
any autumnal splendor of wood and coppice for the sun to shine 
upon and to glorify ; but there were cats and there were spar- 
rows — and gradually there arose a murmur of life, and dirty 
blinds were pulled up or pinned up, and the mortals behind them 
got themselves dressed in their work-a-day clothes, and the day’s 
labors began. For most of them such dreary, weary, monoto- 
nous, and unprofitable labors ! 

Her last day. She looked round the little cell where she had 
spent three long summer months, a willing prisoner — and now 
she loved the place. On her bed lay the sick girl, who had taken 
so many nights’ rest from her. When first she came there was 
no sick girl to care for, nor had she any single friend — who now 
had so many — in the whole place. There were her household 
gods — all the things which Claude had given her for what she 
thought would be a three months’ picnic, but proved to be the 
prelude to a lifelong work ; they were no longer new 5^ the fry- 
ing-pan, never very strong — man, mere man, cannot know how 
to choose a frying-pan — was now battered out of shape ; it had 
fried quantities of chops, steaks, eggs, kidneys, and bacon. The 
saucepan and the kettle both showed — because they had boiled 
with enthusiasm — the black and respectable garb of labor. The 
first freshness was gone from the color of her rugs and curtains. 
The mignonette in the window-box, which had been all the sum- 
mer so great a solace to her, was now reduced to three scentless 
stalks. The summer was over, and the air, when she opened 
the window, blew fresh and cold ; and as for her face, as she 
looked in the glass and wondered what Violet would say, it 
seemed to have grown longer, though that could hardly be, and 
graver. In the past three months how much had she learned, 
and how much had she seen ! 

Her last day ! She was going home — to the real home ; in 
what Sam called the camp of those who are the natural enemies 
of the working-classes, where no one has to work, and the days 
flow on in idless all ; where there is abundance, where there is 
music, where there is art, and where there is the magic of poetry ; 
where the girls are wrapped in soft silks, and kept from hearing 


380 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


how the workwomen cry aloud and cry in vain, and how they suf-* 
fer in patience, hand in hand, with no one to help them or to care 
whether they live or die. But their cry, and the memory of their 
sufferings, would never leave her. She knew that she could no 
longer remain in that camp ; she must come back again ! She 
must return to the world where the women suffer. Everybody 
who once visits that world must go back to it. Those who work 
in it never want to leave it. Only three months ago : why — 
Claude was then her brother ; what was he now ? How could 
they go on working together when he should find out the truth ? 
Three months ago they were both children of an honest work- 
man, dead long since, and now Claude’s father was not dead at 
all, but a shameful, horrible, living creature, who was going to 
bring misery upon all of them unless she could keep him silent 
and obscure. That silence, at any cost, she would procure and 
pay for — Claude must never know or suspect, and Violet must 
never know or suspect. 

She would come back again, not as a visitor, but to liv^e. That 
was now her firm resolve. She was as bent upon it as a novice 
is bent on taking the vows. But she would no longer live in her 
single chamber. That w^as not necessary. Enough for three 
months to have been house-maid, cook, parlor-maid, and lady’s- 
maid all in one ; enough for honor to have carried water up-stairs, 
swept her own room, cooked her own dinner, boiled the kettle, 
made the bed, and cleaned the window. In one respect only 
she differed from the old woman below her — that she put out 
her washing. Now the old woman never had any to put out. 
For the greater part of the time her bed had been occupied by 
a girl in a consumption, so that she had to sleep as she could, on 
a chair, or a bed made up of three chairs. One must be a Mo- 
ravian missionary before one can contemplate without a shudder 
a continuance of this way of life. She was coming back, but it 
would be to a home of her own, where she could live somewhat 
more as she was accustomed to live. Her house should be in 
Hoxton — she was resolved upon that, but it would not be quite in 
the midst of those who habitually get drunk on Saturday nights, 
and eommonly use coarse imprecations, and when in liquor knock 
down and kick their wives. Even the Fellows of Toynbee Hall 
do not actually live in the very courts and lanes of the White^ 
chapel Road and Commercial Street. No doubt they will do so 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


381 


when, by their efforts, these courts have become courts of the 
Great King ; at present they seclude themselves in their college, 
each man with his own room aesthetically furnished for the pleas- 
ure of his soul, and removed somewhat from noise and stress 
and struggle of the common life. We may, in fact, give our- 
selves up, “ like anything,” for our fellow-creatures, who will very 
likely give up nothing, not even a humble little vice or two, in 
return; but there are some hours in the day which should be 
kept apart and consecrated, even by the most thorough Renun- 
ciator, for the recreation and refreshment of his soul. All the 
monks, hermits, and recluses on record made the great mistake 
that they did not provide such hours of rest. The gain, for ex- 
ample, in the way of spiritual elevation would have been inesti- 
mable if the holy fakir, Simeon Stylites, had let himself down 
by a rope ladder, once a day, just to enjoy in the cool of the even- 
ing the conversation of the damsels and gossips in the bazaar ; 
and think of the difference it would have made to the saint who 
used to swing all day with the hook in his back, if some kind 
friend had taken that hook out of him every day, at the going 
down of the sun, so that for a couple of hours at least he might 
have smoked a pipe and had a chat beneath the village banyan. 
To what pinnacles of spirituality might not the fakir Simeon 
and the hooked saint have risen ! But they failed. Simeon got 
no higher, spiritually speaking, than the top of his pillar, and the 
other holy man never got outside, so to speak, of his dangling 
hook, because they were always attached to these foolish things. 
And now their sayings, if they ever said anything, and their dis- 
coveries, if they ever made any, in theology and morals, are quite 
lost and forgotten, just for want of that little daily intermission 
and rest, which would have brightened them up and inspired them 
with words of wisdom. 

These general reflections applied to Valentine mean that too 
much Hoxton for those who have the best interests of Hoxton 
at heart is bad for Hoxton. 

When Valentine went down-stairs, she found her friend the 
letter-writer starting on his daily round among the German im- 
migrants. There had been recently quite a large importation of 
Polish Jews who were making a little Yiddish Poland for them- 
selves up a court. I think they had brought with them a great 
many barrels of native dirt, so as to feel home-like ; and were 


382 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


now living on charity, in the begging of which the scribe was 
making an unusual harvest. He was doing so well that he had 
bought a new pair of second-hand boots ; like a tax-gatherer, he 
carried his ink in one waistcoat-pocket and his pen in another, 
while his writing-paper lay in a shabby old leather case, which 
perhaps was once brown, but now was black with age. He greeted 
Valentine with cheerfulness, though the bishop at the moment 
was lying grievously ill, and his family were gathered at the 
palace, and three physicians were in consultation. 

“ But suppose the bishop dies,” said Valentine ; ‘‘ then your 
dream will be finished.” 

“ Yes,” he answered, with his soft and gentle smile. “ Yes, if 
the bishop does not recover, my dream will be finished indeed ; 
for I am the bishop, you know. You are leaving us to-day ?” 

“ To-morrow morning. I have got, where I am going, another 
mother and another sister. Do you not think it is time I went 
to see them ?” 

They were standing in the court, between the little chapel and 
the open space on the south side, where two or three houses 
have been pulled down. The old man pointed with his stick to 
Melenda’s window, which was open, showing the new clean blind 
and the new curtains ; next, he passed that stick slowly before 
all the houses comprehensively and severally, meaning to in- 
clude them all ; and then he pointed to the little children swarm- 
ing about the place like tadpoles in a pond ; and, lastly, he in- 
dicated the women, bustling about their daily tasks. He did 
this solemnly and slowly, as one who hath a thing to say and 
thus delivers his soul. 

“ Do you know,” he asked, after performing this ceremony, 
“ do you know what they are saying, all of them, at your de- 
parture ?” 

“ What are they saying ?” 

“ They are saying : ‘ Return, O Shulamite !’ ” 

He walked away slowly, with his rounded shoulders, his long 
gray hair, and his ragged coat ; an old man who ought to have 
been taken right away and forbidden to work any more ; who 
should have been provided with all kinds of things that are 
pleasant to old men — with books and sunshine and warmth and 
companionship. In a well-ordered State this will be done for all 
the old men alike, from saint to sinner, from duke to ditcher. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


383 


But nothing can ever be done now for this individual poor old 
man, and you will presently discover why. 

“ Return, O Shulamite !” The words lingered in her ears ; the 
sweet old words of love and yearning. 

Did they want her to return ? Had she done anything to any- 
body during her three months that they should want her to come 
back to them, or that they should miss her presence among them ? 

There is a sense which lies dormant with most of us. It may 
always be awakened, and, once roused, it never leaves us. Let 
us call it, if you please, the Sense of Humanity. It is not phil- 
anthropy, nor benevolence, nor sentimentality ; it is a thing 
much fuller and wider than any of these. Peter got this sense 
when he had the vision of the great sheet. It is the Sense of 
the Universal Brotherhood. Some of the French Republicans 
were filled with it when they first began to shout their cry of 
Equality and Fraternity. Some of the socialists are filled with 
this sense ; it has nothing to do with religion or with creed ; the 
lives of the saints are full of the stories of men who have had 
this sense strongly developed ; the lives of the sinners, which 
have yet to be written — would that I could attempt that stupen- 
dous task ! — will also be found quite full of such stories. Saint 
or sinner, it matters not ; the Sense of Humanity may be found 
in either. One may be a peer and have it ; one may be a beggar 
and have it not. Those who have it, and have developed it, 
are like mathematicians, when they resolve all plane forces to 
two and all forces in space to three, for they presently resolve 
humanity into the simple pair — the man and the woman ; or, to 
be practical, since in the world there are no planes, but every- 
thing is of three dimensions, into the man, the woman, and the 
child. It is a sense by means of which one is enabled to sep- 
arate the man from his clothes, whether they are rags or gowns 
of office, and from his sins, whether they be those which society 
allows, or those which are not recognized ; and — which is a dark 
saying — it destroys respect and yet builds up reverence. Val- 
entine had discovered this sense ; she had awakened it in Claude ; 
she saw it in Sara, in the doctor, and in the assistant priest. 

When the letter-writer had passed out of Ivy Lane Valentine 
remembered the old woman who lived below her and got drunk 
whenever she could. She was not at all a nice old person, but 
Valentine thought she would see her before she departed — it 


384 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


would be neigliborly. So sbe knocked at her door and went in. 
This morning she looked very dreadful, because she had been 
tipsy the evening before, and had got a bruise round one eye, 
and the other was red ; her lips were tremulous and her cheeks 
blotched ; also she wore no cap, which was an error in art, be- 
cause her head was bald in patches. Queen Venus, when she is 
old and bald, ought at least to wear a cap. And she was mut- 
tering over her work, which, as has already been stated, was in- 
timately connected with approaching funerals. 

“ Well, my dear,” she said, cheerfully, “ and how is the sweet 
young gentleman? And how long are you going to stay here ?” 

“ I am going away to-morrow. I came to see if I could do 
anything for you before I go.” 

“ There, now ! I said there’d be a wedding when I saw you 
in St. Luke’s graveyard with him. A sweet young couple indeed. 
Ah ! it does an old woman’s heart good to let her eyes fall on 
such.” 

“ But I am not going to be married.” 

“Well, my dear, it won’t matter much how you arrange it. 
And there’ll be another match soon, unless I’m mistaken, with 
Liz up-stairs — ^there’s another pretty one for you — and her young 
gentleman. Oh ! I’ve seen them together too.” 

“ Is there anything I can do for you before I go ?” 

“ Well,” said the old woman, “ I dare say he’s given you some 
money. He looks the sort to be free of money.” 

“ I tell you I’m not going to be married.” 

“ I didn’t say you were, my dearie. But if you’ve a shilling 
upon you to spare, I’d thank you for it. Get all you can, my 
dear, get all you can while your time lasts.” 

She looked detestably cunning and inconceivably wicked. 
Valentine, however, found a coin for her. 

“The air’s getting fresh now,” the old lady went on, “and the 
nights are cold. When it’s too cold to sit without a fire and to 
sleep without blankets, I’ve got to go back to the ’Ouse. It’s 
warm there, if it’s nothing else. You think it’s hard, but wait 
till you’re as old as me, my dear, and see if you don’t come to it 
as well. Make yourself happy while you can. It’s no use sav- 
ing ; spend and enjoy all you can get while you are young, my 
pretty. When you’re old you’ll have the remembrance of it, and 
it’ll make you feel happy just to think that you didn’t let the 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


385 


good times slip past. Don’t forget me next year if I’m spared 
to come out. Oh ! it does one good in such a place as this, even 
to see a pretty girl with a proper frock on. But there, you 
won’t he pretty when you come back here. Lord ! what a fig- 
ure I had once ! And I can tell you about the time when I had 
a house of my own !” 

Valentine left her at the commencement of these recollections. 
Eve, in age and decay, long after she had eaten, not one, but all 
the forbidden apples within reach, and longed for those out of 
her reach, may have looked so and talked so. A curious case 
for the spiritual physician. Next year she will be “ out ” again, 
for these old women are tough and long-lived ; and perhaps for 
many years she will continue to be alternately in ” and “ out,” 
and to exist as an example and a warning for the young. This 
dear lady, too, ought to be taken away and carefully cherished, 
with warmth and good food, and the semblance of liberty. Not 
that she would ever repent her of her sins, or wish the memory 
of the past to be other than it is, or get a gleam of light into her 
darkened soul about a better life. A better plan, perhaps, would 
be painless and sudden extinction. But the old lady, who, I sup- 
pose, would have to be consulted, for form’s sake, is not yet edu- 
cated to the point of perceiving how much her disappearance 
would benefit mankind. The subject opens a wide field for 
speculation, for there are so many among us who might with 
advantage be painlessly and unexpectedly extinguished. 

Valentine proceeded on her way down Ivy Lane, calling at the 
houses where she had friends, that is to say, at nearly every 
house. The children ran after her as she went, catching at her 
hands and hanging to her skirts. That means nothing, because 
children are so foolish as to trust and love every one who is kind 
to them. “ Come back soon,” they cried ; “ come back soon.” 
Then from the children Valentine went to see her friends, the 
workwomen, in their rooms. She knew, by this time, dozens of 
them, which is not difiicult in this Thimble-and-Thread Land, 
where there are so many thousands always at work. The women 
paused in their work for a minute to bid her farewell. There 
was the young tailoress of nineteen with two babies and a hus- 
band out of work, and her mother who looked after the babies, 
while she worked from seven in the morning till ten at night, for 
eight shillings a week, less the cost of coal and Candle, soap and 
17 


386 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


cotton. She was a handsome, capable-looking girl, with square 
chin, fresh lips, and strong eyes. She looked up and laughed a 
welcome, and when Valentine bade her farewell, she cried, but 
not for long, although a whole hour’s crying would only have 
cost her a penny and one-fifteenth. “But you’ll come back 
soon,” she said. Then there was the woman who lived on the 
ground-fioor, working all day long for bare life, with her daugh- 
ter ; there was the old lady with the imbecile husband, who 
worked for both ; there was the girl who ought to have been 
married some years before, and there was the girl who ought not 
to have been married for some years to come ; they all stopped 
to bid her farewell and to say “ Come back soon,” and then re- 
turned again to their breathless and headstrong flight from the 
Fury of Famine, who pursues them continually with a scourge of 
knotted cord, or a flagellum loaded with lead, such as that with 
which the Romans corrected disobedient slaves. Then there 
were the older women with their great families — Nature, very 
oddly, when the horn of plenty is quite empty, always fills it 
with babies. How bravely they work, these mothers ! And 
how their faces harden, and how early the lines gather round lips 
and eyes ! Surely, as the girls murmur when the drilling begins, 
surely, “ it is a shame !” 

And from them too, from every room into which Valentine 
had found her way, from every court there came the cry, “ Come 
back soon ” — “ Return, 0 Shulamite !” Strange how the words 
lingered in her ear and repeated themselves — words sometimes 
will, just as if they followed one about or were echoed within 
the recesses of the brain. 

At the door of the Boys’ Institute, she met the Rev. Mr. Ran- 
dal Smith. He was looking pale and overworked, because he 
had been in London all the summer; and, besides, had given 
away his money, and had none to go on holiday with ; and his 
long coat and broad-bnmmed black hat were shabby because he 
could not afford new ones, and he looked faded, and dejected, 
and boyish, and without dignity.' 

“ I know you are going,” he said, gloomily. “ The doctor told 
me.” 

“ I am coming back again.’^ 

“ It is wonderful that you stayed so long. We shall miss yon, 
though you never come to church.” 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


387 


“ Not to your church.” 

“ Oh ! what a power for good you might be if you chose ! 
Why, you might bring all those hoys of mine to church ; they 
would follow you. It’s the only thing for them — church dis- 
cipline and confession. I know you laugh at us ; but there is 
nothing except the confessional for getting a hold over the peo- 
ple and putting the priests in their right place.” 

“ Well, Mr. Smith, if you will confess to the doctor, I dare say 
he will confess to you. Will not that satisfy you ? Never mind 
your confessional ; tell me about yourself. You look pale — you 
want a holiday.” 

“ I cannot get one, unfortunately.” 

As Valentine considered this young man she remembered that 
it was for some such life as this, without the choral services, 
that Claude was giving up his career. What if he should weary 
of it? 

“ Tell me,” she said, “ you who work so hard and do so much 
for the boys — are you contented with your life ?” 

“ I am quite contented with it. I ask for nothing better.” 

“ That is a brave thing to say. Would you, if you had the 
chance, exchange it for an easier life and a larger income ?” 

“ Not now,” he replied, sturdily. “ When I grow old and 
feeble, I should like a stronger man to come here.” 

“ Do you think that everybody engaged in such work as this 
continues to be as satisfied and contented ?” 

“ I think so. We must not desire anything beyond the work 
that we are set to do.” 

“ Do you never wish,” Valentine continued, “ for opportunities 
of distinction ? Are you never ambitious ?” 

“ I have no other ambition,” he replied, with an ecclesiastical 
tag and a return of the breathless manner, “ than to be a faithful 
servant.” In fact, he had no desire for distinction at all, prob- 
ably because in quite early life he understood that he was neither 
sharp nor clever. 

“ And* do you never,” she asked, “ do you never think of love 
or marriage ?” She was asking all these questions in the inter- 
est, so to speak, of Claude, and she suddenly, but too late, re- 
membered what the doctor had told her. This young man had 
been thinking about love. “ Forgive me,” she said, hurriedly, 
because he blushed and trembled and looked about for the earth 


388 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


to swallow him ; “ forgive me, Mr. Smith, I ought not to have 
asked you that question.” 

“ It — it doesn’t matter. Thank you,” he said, “ it’s of no con- 
sequence.” 

“ I was only wondering,” she explained, “ whether in such 
work as yours there never comes a sense of weariness, as if it 
were all no good and one might as well be living like the rest of 
the world.” 

“ There is no weariness of the work. Sometimes, perhaps, 
sometimes one thinks of a life — with — with love in it.” His 
eyes dropped, and he blushed again. 

“ No weariness in the work. That never palls, does it?” 

“ Well” — he was really a truthful young man — “ there are the 
church services. It is no doubt the best discipline possible for 
a man, and of course we say matins and evensong for the whole 
parish, but as nobody ever comes to hear them, one sometimes 
feels as if there were too many services.” 

“ So I should think.” 

“It is a weakness of the flesh which I hope to overcome in 
time.” 

She touched his hand and left him with a pleasing and rather 
uncommon mixture in her heart, composed of admiration, re- 
spect, and pity in equal parts, and just as one adds to a claret 
cup a little sprig of borage or a strawberry, so she added the 
merest dash of contempt. His life was so hard — he was so con- 
tented, so courageous, and so unselfish — he was so patient — he 
thought so little of himself — he was so free from any ambition 
except to be, as he said, a faithful servant — he accepted with so 
much meekness the tiresome and useless things which wasted 
his time and dragged him from his real work, the daily chanting 
of services which nobody attended, the weary iteration of litanies 
in an empty church and the fripperies which this poor, ignorant 
lad took for the true religion of the past, the present, and the 
future ; a religion in which, he thought, there was to be no sing- 
ing, except of Gregorian chants ; and no sunshine, except.through 
painted windows ; and no attitude for the laity in scecula scecu- 
lorum, except of continual genuflexion before a close -shaven 
man in a cassock and a cope and a biretta cap, surrounded by 
boys in white surplices, with pots of incense. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


389 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE LAST EVENING. 

You must spend this evening with us, Claude,” said Valen- 
tine ; “ it is my last evening, and we are going to have tea in 
Melenda’s room. Besides, I want you to say all sorts of kind 
things to the poor girl.” 

“Your last evening! A good deal has happened^ Valentine, 
since you came here first.” 

“ Yes, a great deal has happened. But, Claude, we must get 
those lines out of your forehead and the depression out of your 
eyes.” See how readily men betray their trouble. 

“ You will not do that easily, Valentine,” he said, with a forced 
laugh. “ The Fates are too strong even for you.” 

She was now quite certain that the trouble of his soul could 
only be caused by some knowledge of his father’s history, but 
she could not learn how much he knew. 

“ You do not regret your choice, Claude.” 

“ I had no choice,” he replied, gloomily ; “ I thought I had. 
But I had not. There are some men, Valentine, who are con- 
demned to obscurity from the very beginning ; they can only be 
happy when they are unknown and forgotten.” 

Claude was more than usually gloomy, because he was suffer^ 
ing from an acute attack of a complaint not described in any 
book on medicine. Celsus and Galen ignore its symptoms. It 
has no name, but it is caused by family or paternal shame. His 
excellent father, who found in the torture of his son a truly de- 
lightful amusement, and concluded that the daughter, who lived 
in Hoxton, was not worth following up so long as she paid her 
weekly sovereign, now visited his chambers at all hours, having 
a master-key which he had made for himself. He borrowed 
Claude’s clothes ; he drank his wine ; he sat there and fiddled 
all day long ; he smoked tobacco there ; he opened all the desks 
and drawers and read all the private papers — even those verses 


390 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


with which every young man loves to comfort his soul, and the 
letters from his friends ; he came in the morning and stayed 
all day ; he came in the evening and stayed all night. Claude 
might give up his chambers, but the man would follow him, and 
what would be the end ? He demanded money perpetually, and 
always got some, if not all that he asked, by the exercise of a 
very simple threat. If he did not get it he would go to his 
daughters. He had even begun to take away things which were 
portable and might be pawned, such as the silver mugs, those 
volumes which were expensively hound, and the pictures ; hon- 
estly, however, giving his son the pawn tickets. 

Claude made no objection at all. Let the man go on ; let him 
strip the place ; let him do what he pleased, so that he remained 
unknown to the rest of his family. 

Claude forced himself, however, to assume a pretence of cheer- 
fulness, and stayed with Valentine. They all had tea together in 
Melenda’s room. It was a quiet party ; Melenda, to begin with, 
was shy, and as yet a little awkward in the performance of her 
new character as Melenda the amiable. Yet she looked the part. 
The new dressing of her hair changed her face, her eyes were 
no longer fierce ; two days only of good food had taken the 
hungry look out of her face ; she was in repose, and she was 
afraid of her brother, who, however, said nothing about the great 
and startling transformation — not even to offer a word of con- 
gratulation, being quite absorbed in thought about other things. 
As for Lizzie, she was still under the influence of repentance, 
and not without fear that her lover might himself come to the 
house, and insist on her promises being kept. Moreover, the 
shadow of death rested upon the place, and in the next room 
lay one who patiently awaited the summons. 

The autumn day was already closed, for in the middle of Octo- 
ber the sun sets at five ; the curtains were drawn, the lamp was 
lit, the fire burning, and Melenda, in the newly-born joy of her 
own humiliation, thought the room looked almost as lovely as 
Valentine’s ; and after tea they sat round the fire, Valentine hold- 
ing Melenda’s hand in her own. 

About seven o’clock they heard steps upon the stairs, and there 
appeared at the door no other than Joe himself, accompanied by 
his daughter Rhoda, and Sam. 

“ Mother told us,” he said, “ that you were going away to-mor- 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


391 


row. Why, what in the name o’ wonder has come over the place ?” 
For Melenda’s room, he perceived, was transformed into a lady’s 
bower. 

“It is only that Melenda and I are friends at last,” Valentine 
explained. “ Come in, Rhoda dear ; come in, Sam.” 

“And so I thought I’d come. Well, I shouldn’t ha’ known 
the place, Melenda, I shouldn’t really — nor you neither, I shouldn’t 
— and I brought Rhoder along with me, and we went out of our 
way to fetch Sam. Look at your Aunt Melenda, my gal ; now 
she’s something like. I never knew you were so well worth 
lookin’ at, Melenda.” Melenda blushed and laughed. 

“ Sit down, Joe,” said Valentine. “ Rhoda, you take my chair. 
Sam, you must sit on the bed, unless you like to stand.” 

So, for the first time since the departure of Polly into the 
aristocratic world, the whole of this remarkable family, counting 
Valentine as Polly, were gathered together. The vicissitudes 
of families have furnished many subjects for the moralist and 
the story-teller as well as for the genealogist. In every house 
there are those who have climbed or are climbing, and those 
who have gone under and are still going lower. Down goes 
Jack, and with him his whole detachment. Up goes Dick, and 
with him his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren. But 
it is rare to find so much variety in one group and one gener- 
ation. It is not usual, for instance, for a Fellow of Trinity to 
have one sister a needlewoman and another a young lady ; nor 
is it a general thing for a plumber’s man to have one brother a 
Board School Master and one a Cambridge scholar. It is also 
unusual, Claude reflected, for any family to have a father with 
so remarkable a history as their own. 

“You’re going away,” Joe repeated, slowly, looking still at 
Melenda, whose changed appearance fascinated him. “ You’re 
going away.” It is the place of the elder brother to give utter- 
ance for the family on all occasions of importance, and in every 
conseil de famille. Joe accepted his responsibility, and was al- 
ways ready to perform his duties as head of the family, though 
Claude might be a gentleman, and Sam had achieved greatness. 
“You’re going away to-morrow; well, you’ve done a deal o’ 
good to us since you came. Mother, she’ll miss you more than 
a bit. We left her cryin’, didn’t we, Rhoder? And so will the 
girls here — they’ll miss you terrible, won’t you, Melenda? Lord ! 


392 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


it’s wonderful. You look just exactly like a girl out of a shop, 
quiet and respectable, instead of going about in rags, and flying 
in one’s face like a wild cat. And you’ll miss her too, Liz ; and 
as for that poor girl in the next room — your own room too ! — 
what in the world will she do without you?” 

“ But I’m not going away for long. I am coming back. I 
am going to live in Hoxton ; so is Claude.” 

Sam grunted. 

“There was two of you came first,” Joe went on, slowly. 
“ You said then as you didn’t know which of the two was Polly. 
As for the other one, she hasn’t come again, has she? Very 
well ; first, we don’t need to say much about you before your 
face, do we ? No. When you go away, whether it’s for short 
or for long, there’s some you’ve left behind who’ll remember 
you, ain’t there, Melenda ?” 

“ She knows there is,” said Melenda. 

“ Well, and about the other one now. If it should happen ” — 
he said this very slowly, so that there might be no possibility of 
any mistake — “ I wish to say — for all of us — that if it should 
happen to come to pass that the other one was to turn out to be 
Polly after all, and not you at all ; and that you should turn out 
to be her ladyship’s daughter. Miss Beatrice — which it may be 
for aught I know — why, I want to give you a message for the 
other one.” 

“ Yes, Joe, what is the message ?” 

“ It is a message from all of us : from Melenda, and Sam, and 
Claude, as well as from me. It’s to tell her not to be ashamed 
of her family, because her father was a man with such a charac- 
ter for truth and honesty as very few men can boast, and a clever 
workman as well — ” Oh, Joe! — Claude and Valentine glanced 
involuntarily at each other. “That’s what I’ve always told 
Claude. Don’t let her be ashamed of her father ; and as for us, 
why, we don’t expect her to come and live with us as you’ve 
done ; we don’t ask her, nor we don’t -expect her. We know 
that’s she’s a young lady accustomed to live among young ladies, 
and we’re on’y plain working people. It’s enough that you’ve 
come. We haven’t harmed you, have we ? You’ve heard a bit 
of rough talk now and then ; perhaps you’ve seen a bit o’ rough 
ways, and found out a deal of things you never suspected before, 
I dare say ; but our people haven’t harmed you — our people never 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


393 


will harm any respectable girl. If she’d wanted us, she’d have 
come to us with you. So you tell her that she’s a sweet young 
lady to look at, and we like to think of her pretty face, hut we 
sha’n’t take it amiss that she don’t come to us, because she is 
not one of us. Don’t forget to tell her that — not one of us has 
got anything to ask of her or to take of her.” Sam snorted, 
and Melenda tossed her head. She had surrendered to one and 
not to both. “ She needn’t he a bit afraid that any of her rela- 
tions will ever seek her out, or intrude upon her, except Claude, 
and he’s a gentleman. I don’t see that she’s any call to be 
ashamed of us as honest and respectable people, ain’t we, Me- 
lenda ? and one of us has worked himself up noble, hasn’t he, 
Sam ? As for her father, you tell her again that he was one in 
a thousand — ah ! — as one may say, one of a thousand for honesty.” 

With the repetition of this colossal falsehood, Joe paused. Then 
he added a few words of personal application, just as a clergyman 
winds up his discourse. 

“ As for you,” he said, “ whether you are Polly, or whether 
you are not, you’re a lady, and such we are glad to see. You 
can’t come too often nor stay too long. You don’t want to 
poke your nose into the working-man’s affairs, as some ladies do ; 
you don’t think your duty lays in giving advice gratis ; you 
don’t want to manage folk as if they were Sunday-school chil- 
dren ; you don’t come the temperance gospel nor the hlood-and- 
fire hallelujah over us ; you don’t look at us as if we were speci- 
mens in a museum ; you don’t sniff and make believe as if you 
were sorry for us all when there’s a little mess about the place ; 
when a chap’s in trouble or down in his luck, you don’t wait for 
three weeks while the case is gone into ; you don’t talk about 
us as if we working people were the poor, and everybody else 
was the rich. Sam does that when he gets into a rage, but it 
don’t amount to more than slashing into the system. Sam thinks 
he can make us all rich and happy with a new system. Lord ! 
there ain’t a great deal of difference between us after all; it’s 
mostly a matter of clothes. Look at Melenda, now you’ve smart- 
ened her up. She ain’t so pretty as you, but now she’s dressed 
and quiet, she looks as nice mannered, almost.” 

“ Thank you, Joe,” said Valentine. “ If it should he as you 
think, and Violet should prefer her present life, which is possi- 
ble, I will tell her what you say. If it should not be so, why, 
11 * 


394 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


all the more reason for my coming back to live among my own 
people, and to be proud of my brothers. Oh, Joe, I do think 
you are the best fellow in the world.” For that brave sticking 
out for his worthless father, so that the brothers and sisters 
might never be ashamed, and never even suspect the truth, went 
straight to her heart. 

‘‘And now we’ll go,” said Joe. “ Come, Rhoder. Good-bye, 
Miss Eldridge.” He took her hand respectfully, not fraternally, 
and she clearly perceived that he knew her secret. 

Then Melenda and Lizzie went to look after Lotty, and the 
three who remained began to talk. 

“ And what are you going to do when you come back ?” asked 
Sam. “ You can’t do any general good, though you may do 
something for these three girls. Nothing can be done of any 
real use until the system is changed, and we’ve begun by putting 
the land on a proper footing. That’s at the bottom of all.” 

“ You shall settle that, Sam,” said Valentine. “ Meantime we 
shall take the world as it is, and go on tinkering in our small 
way, until your revolution sets everything right forever after.” 

“ What’s the use of arguing with a woman ?” Sam asked, turn- 
ing to Claude. “ Here we are, working up for the grandest 
change the world has ever seen — the change that is going to 
give the people their own back again — and she keeps on at us 
because we don’t stop to make a fuss about the workwomen.” 

“We cannot expect you, with such a magnificent scheme in 
your head, to think about your sisters, Sam, can we ?” 

“ It will all come in time. I am thinking about them, I tell 
you. When we’ve abolished rent, and competition, and interest, 
and capital ; when we’ve nationalized the land, and prevented any- 
body from getting rich, and made everybody work, I suppose 
women’s wages will be as good as men’s ; that is, they will all 
be alike, and they’ll mean a good living to everybody — won’t 
that satisfy you ?” 

“ Perhaps, when it comes. But, Sam, how long it is in com- 
ing ! And suppose we don’t like it when it does come ? Sup- 
pose you only make it more possible for selfish men to use the 
labor of others, and for strong men to trample on the weak ?” 

“You are talking nonsense. You don’t know the very first 
beginnings of our revolution,” 

“ Claude, have you nothing to say 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


395 


Claude hesitated. Things had grown terribly real with him of 
late, and he spoke slowly and with sadness. “ I do not suppose,” 
he said, “ that some men are born with saddles fitted to their 
backs, and others with spurs on their heels. And I think that 
Maurice was right when he taught that the reign of Universal 
Competition is not exactly and altogether the Kingdom of Heaven. 
And I do not believe that the Lord is always on the side of the 
man who is making money.” 

“Very good,” said Sam. “Why, this is just as I would be- 
gin myself.” 

“ But I am certain there is no system, or institution, or code 
of laws, whatever, which can be imposed upon a people, unless 
they are ready for it and desire it for themselves. You will 
never live to see your dream realized, Sam, because it will be al- 
ways impossible to make the men of ability, who are the only 
men to be considered, desire a system in which they themselves 
shall not be able to do good to themselves first. If it were es- 
tablished to-morrow, it would fall to pieces the next day, for 
want of incessant and universal watchfulness. I think we had 
better take the world as it is, and use the materials lying ready 
to our hands.” 

“ Oh ! the world as it is,” Sam repeated, “ with the lords and 
the Church, the parsons, and the landlords, and the manufacturers, 
and the capitalists !” 

“ With all of them — just as it is — let us take it as it is. Mean- 
while there is a revolution going on of which you know nothing. 
It is a movement which will be perhaps one of the greatest things 
that the world has ever seen.” He did not mean the Earthly 
Tract Society. “ Men and women who have learned all that 
science and art and history and philosophy can teach them are 
returning to the soil and to the gutter from which their fathers 
sprang. They come back laden with treasures, which they long 
to lavish among the people. This is to practise the Christianity 
which you advanced thinkers despise. Consider another thing, 
Sam. It is not only that these missionaries will live among the 
people and teach them all kinds of things, but they will bring 
the fierce light of publicity to bear upon their ways and their 
wants. Do you think that any employer in the world would 
dare to pay his working-women as Melenda has been paid, and 
to treat them with the cruelty of drilling as she has been treated, 


396 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


if he knew that his name and his rate of pay and his treatment 
of woman would the very next day be paraded in the public 
press ? The power of publicity has only just commenced. The 
journalists as yet only half understand their own power. Why, 
these men and women are going about actually setting up elec- 
tric lamps in dark places. Let us try to bring this light into all 
the workshops, so that no kind of grinding and tyranny shall be 
overlooked. You know what the Russian student said at the 
grave of his dead comrade, while the police stood by ready to 
arrest him for a word : “ My brothers,” he said, stretching out 
his arms, “ Light ! We want more light.” With light, every- 
thing may come ; even some of the universal unselfishness, Sam, 
which your generous heart thinks possible. At least, the first 
steps will be taken when the people begin by themselves to re- 
solve that justice and equity shall be meted out to all. Even 
to the London working-girl. And as for systems, the force of 
opinion is stronger than any system. Opinion is the will of 
the people ; let us get opinion on the side of the girls. And 
then — light — more light.” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE bishop’s death-bed. 

It was about nine o’clock when Sam left them. He was angry, 
because he could not convince them, and because his brother 
was so very near the gate of truth, and so very perverse in his 
refusal to step in. And yet, said Sam- to himself, logic, justice, 
equity, reason, natural religion, the laws of the universe — every- 
thing cries aloud that there is no gospel but Socialism. All men 
are born equal — every man with two legs and ten fingers, and no 
possessions at all, not a scrap of purple velvet, and not a shovel- 
ful of land ; no spurs on his heels, and no saddle on his back ; 
no crown on his head, and no chains on his wrists ; for every 
one the same inheritance, namely, the whole of the round world 
and all that therein is, that is, as much of it as, divided among 
the X inhabitants in equal portions, constitutes his share. Every 
man must work every day for the general good, he must eat at 
a common table — why should one man have cutlets a la Soubise, 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


39V 


and another cold pig? He must share in all the luxuries that 
are attainable by every one ; if there be other luxuries which are 
not enough to go round, they may be divided among the sick 
and the aged ; why should one man drink champagne, and anoth- 
er vin bleu ? This is Sam’s position, and, really, it is impossible 
to dislodge him from it. He is impregnable, because he is per- 
fectly right. Against him, however, is a force with which he 
and his friends have never reckoned ; it is sometimes called hu- 
man nature. It is, in fact, the simple, unarmed, naked, natural 
man, who, alone, is a match for a host, armed with all the weapons 
of logic, and reason, and right, because of his selfishness, which 
is a whole armor in itself. He wants all he can grab for him- 
self, and he will go on grabbing all he can. He derides equal- 
ity ; he holds that the spoils are for the strongest ; and on this 
principle he is resolved to live, and so will continue to live until 
the Kingdom of Heaven comes to change all, and make his posi- 
tion disagreeable. Such being the habit, custom, resolution, and 
attitude of the natural man, the Socialist may rage furiously, but 
he will rage in vain. 

‘‘ I must go, too,” said Claude, taking his hat ; “ I am glad 
they came to-night. Alas ! the summer is over, to-morrow morn- 
ing you will be gone. Good-night, Valentine ; and farewell.” 

“ Why a solemn farewell, Claude ?” 

“ Because the past can never be repeated — ” 

“ Nothing is ever repeated ; but things .can be continued. If 
you are going to walk, let me walk a part of the way with you. 
Oh ! I am not afraid of returning alone ; no one ever molests me. 
I am just a shop-girl going home, you know, after business.” 

They went out together. The streets were crowded, because 
it was fine, and a Saturday night. Even Bitfield Street and 
East Road, which are considered quiet thoroughfares, were filled 
with costers’ carts, and with folk who came out to buy. The 
City Road was noisy with multitudinous footsteps, and a good 
half of Old Street was blocked with the overflow of White Cross 
Street, where there is held, every day and every evening, the 
noblest costers’ market in the whole of London, not even ex- 
cepting that of the Whitechapel Road. The space is more 
limited ; but then the very narrowness sets off the variety and 
cheapness of the goods displayed. Many costers’ markets there 
be in this great town : one would not willingly do injustice to 

Cc 


398 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


Clare Market, to the New Cut, to the High Street, Marylebone, 
or to Leather Lane ; but that of White Cross Street outshines 
them all. 

“ These faces haunt me,” said Valentine, as they moved slow- 
ly through the crowd. “ I shall carry home with me a ghostly 
crowd of faces. How many thousands of faces have I seen 
here, and none of them alike ? The noise is nothing ; one does 
not remember noise, but the faces — the faces remain ; they are 
always with me.” 

“ If the faces were all boiled down into one by repeated 
photographs, what sort of a face would it be ?” 

“ Not into one face, Claude ; there must be two faces : those 
of the working-man and the working-woman. I think the man’s 
face would show a certain sluggishness and a good deal of self- 
indulgence, and in his eyes one would discern a sense of humor ; 
the woman’s face would show patience and suffering, and her 
eyes would be sharp with indignation ; they would have no 
humor in them. Whatever they might turn out, they would not 
be bad faces.” 

The English face, compounded of many races, is seldom, in 
fact, a bad face : it is good-tempered to begin with ; it is inde- 
pendent and self-reliant ; there is a love of justice in it ; there 
is strength in it ; there is capability in it ; there is the possibil- 
ity of wrath in it ; such wrath as makes the Englishman, when 
his blood is roused, the most dangerous animal in the world — 
witness the savagery of our soldiers in India not quite thirty 
years ago ; yet the devil faces which one sees in Paris, when the 
people are out in the streets, are never found in White Cross 
Market. To watch the English face is to learn trust in the 
English people. 

“ You will cease to think of your troubles, Claude,” said 
Valentine ; “ you will think of these men and women instead, 
won’t you ? It will be best for you ; and I am sure it is best to 
let the dead bury the dead.” 

“ I wish to heaven I could. But suppose the dead refuse to 
be buried ?” 

She said no more. Perhaps he had found out even more than 
she had feared. Presently they reached the end of Old Street 
where it runs like a broad river into Goswell Road and Alders* 
gate Street, and here Valentine stopped. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


399 


“Good-bye, Claude,” sbe said; “come to see us at borne to- 
morrow evening. I am going borne again. Ob ! .1 bave bad 
tbe strangest, tbe most beautiful summer that ever any girl bad, 
and all by your belp, Claude. How can I ever tbank you 
enough? I wonder if you can understand at all wbat it bas 
been to me — tbis revelation of men and women, whom we dare 
to call common men and women? I am like Peter after tbe 
vision and tbe message, wbicb only came to bim three times. 
But my vision and my message, Claude, bave been repeated to 
me daily for ninety days.” 

“ And as for me, Valentine,” be replied, huskily, “ I can never 
tell you, I can never even try to tell you, wbat tbe summer bas 
been to me.” 

He pressed her band, and sbe left bim. Sbe was not, you 
see, bis sister ; that he bad known all along, and now sbe would 
find out tbe truth, and it was impossible that they should con- 
tinue together in tbe old relations. Wbat more? He loved 
her. Who could belp loving her, who was so winsome, so loyal, 
and so brave ? He bad always loved her, ever since tbe day 
when be found out that sbe was not bis sister ; and for her sake 
be bad given up all his ambitions, yea, even tbe ambition of tbe 
chancellor’s woolsack ; and there were moments when it seemed 
possible, but tbe appearance of bis father made that and every- 
thing else impossible ; and now, be should never be able to tell 
her, even in tbe after-years, wbat sbe bad become to bim. How 
could such a man as himself, with such a family record, dare to 
connect himself, even in thought, with such a girl ? 

He stood at the corner of tbe street, watching her light figure 
speeding quickly along tbe pavement. Now, either because bis 
heart was so full of love that be could not bear to let tbe girl 
go out of his sight, or because a divine admonition came to 
bim — they do come sometimes and interfere strangely with the 
fortunes of men, though generally we disregard them, so that 
rogues triumph — Valentine bad not got thirty steps before be 
felt constrained to turn and follow after her. He did so, keep- 
ing a few yards behind her, and not losing sight of her for a 
moment. 

Tbe light figure moved swiftly among tbe people who crowded 
tbe pavement, through tbe men who lounged bands in pocket, 
and tbe women who pushed basket in band. They made way 


400 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


for her to pass, no one offering her the least familiarity. Some 
of them, perhaps, knew her by this time. She passed through 
the crowd and crossed the street to the north side where there 
were fewer people. Presently she stopped, and Claude watched 
her while she talked to a girl. I know not what she said, or 
whether she gave the girl anything, hut when Valentine left her 
that girl went away quickly, and in exactly the opposite direc- 
tion, which seemed as if she had changed her mind about some- 
thing. In the City Road she stopped again, to talk with an- 
other woman who had a baby in her arms. She did give that 
woman something, and she, too, turned and walked away in an- 
other direction, which leads one to believe that she proposed to 
go home and put the baby to bed. One of these days we shall 
have a female police in addition to the present highly efficient 
masculine force. They will be called probably the Female Per- 
suasives, rather than the Female Force. They will carry no 
clubs or revolvers, and they will be horribly dreaded by all kinds 
of sinners. When you have crossed the City Road and en- 
gaged, so to speak, with Brunswick Place, you are already with- 
in the limits of Hoxton itself, and if you are so happy as to live 
in that City of Industry, you are among friends, and almost at 
home ; therefore you will naturally, as Valentine did, begin, at 
this point, to walk more slowly. 

Claude still followed her, as far as the western entrance of 
Ivy Lane in St. J ohn’s Road. There he would have left her and 
gone his way, but for a thing which awakened his suspicions. 
St. John’s Road is not better lighted than any other of the less 
important London streets, where they blindly follow the custom 
of our ancestors, and plant the gas -lamps — each with a glass top 
artfully designed to let all the light mount upwards to the sky 
and so be lost — at the same intervals as were thought good in 
the old days of oil -lamps. The conservatism of the oflSicial 
mind is a truly wonderful subject for contemplation. The 
street was, however, well enough lighted for Claude to see a 
figure waiting about on the pavement, opposite to Ivy Lane. 
There were plenty of people walking, but this man was evident- 
ly waiting, and when Valentine turned into Ivy Lane, this man 
crossed the road and followed her. 

He followed her at a distance of three or four yards — Claude 
wondered what it might mean. Then he passed under the gaS' 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


401 


lamp at the entrance of the street, and Claude saw his face. 
Heavens I It was the face of his father ! What could he want 
with Valentine, except to break his promise, and molest and 
frighten her ? It was his father, and by a lurch of the shoulders 
which betrayed him, his father, it was certain, had been drinking. 

Claude quickened his step, his first impulse being to stop the 
man ; but he checked himself, because to do so would certainly 
cause a row in the street. He would wait till Valentine was in 
her own room. He kept close behind, therefore, ready to in- 
terfere for her protection. 

The street was pretty fuU of women, talking, though it was 
past ten o’clock and the evening was chilly ; there were also a 
good lot of children, shouting and playing. Valentine passed 
through them, with a word of greeting and a fair good-night 
for each. The crowd parted right and left and made a lane for 
her, because they knew her; they parted again for Mr. Carey, 
because the crowd always does make a respectful lane for a man 
who has been drinking. But for Claude they did not make way, 
and he had to force his way through, and the children got about 
his feet, so that the chase drew ahead of him, and he was unable 
to prevent what most he dreaded. 

On the ground-fioor Valentine found Mr. Lane’s door wide 
open, and his candle burning. She looked in and nodded pleas- 
antly. 

“You are feeling well to-night ?” she asked. 

“ Never better, never better,” he replied, stoutly. “ Business 
has been good this week. I think they are beginning to find 
me out at last. It is strange, too, because I am very near the 
end of my dream.” 

“ I hope not. Can’t your dream last a little longer ?” 

“ I’ve got no control over it. You don’t expect me to alter 
the decrees of Fate. The good bishop is on his death-bed — I am 
certain he can never recover. The children are with him. The 
prayers of all the churches in the diocese have been offered for 
him. Many there are who live on, long after sixty-seven : most- 
ly they are men who have only cumbered the ground, whose lives 
should be an eternal shame to them — men like me — unprofita- 
ble dogs. Men like the bishop are generally called away early, 
before the allotted span. Well, he will go to his own place. 
But as for me, what shall I do when he is dead and buried ?” 


402 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Indeed, Mr. Lane, I do not know. You will have to find 
some other amusement for your evenings.” 

“ Amusement ? For me ?” He shook his head ; and she left 
him. 

Then the old woman who lived at the back came out of her den. 

“ There’s been a gentleman asking for you, my dear,” she 
said — not a young gentleman ; oh, no ! — an elderly gentle- 
man — with a pipe in his mouth, and a little in liquor ; and most 
pleasant in his manners, and liberal and generous.” 

“ A gentleman for me ?” 

“ Yes, my dear, and very anxious he was to know your ways, 
and asked a many questions !” (she did not add that he had be- 
gun by giving her a florin) “ about what you do with yourself, 
and who gives you your money. But I was very careful — oh ! 
I am very careful indeed, my dear — I didn’t let out nothing 
about the young gentleman. For, thinks I, very likely he may 
be one of the jealous sort !” 

“ Oh !” said Valentine, impatiently, “ what have I to do with 
any elderly gentleman ?” 

“ I do hope there’s not going to be any trouble about the 
young gentleman. P’r’aps it wasn’t jealousy, and to be sure, I 
have known, more than once, the lawyers to step in at the last 
moment and stop it, when the banns was on the point of being 
put up, so to speak, and the wedding-ring bought. Mind, my 
dear, don’t you give up the letters — don’t give up a single line 
of writing — make ’em pay for the letters, if it’s five hundred 
pound. Here he is again — don’t forget about the letters. He 
do look like a lawyer a bit, come to look at him, don’t he ?” 

It so happened that Mr. Carey, at the very beginning of this 
evening, and when he had not yet taken more than two or three 
glasses, had begun to consider the problem of his daughter, and 
why she lived in Ivy Lane, and where she got her money from, 
and by what steps she had come to look like a lady, and what a 
beautiful thing it would be for himself if he could by any means 
entrap her, and make her his confederate and partner. Such 
things have been done ; but first it is necessary to know a little 
of a girl’s history. He drank another glass or two ; then he re- 
solved that he would himself pay a visit to Ivy Lane and find 
out what he could. It was a beginning, and he would trust no 
one but himself. So he came and began, Valentine being out, 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


403 


by pumping the old lady, wbo willingly told all she knew, which 
was little to the point. Then he waited for her return. 

“Well, my dear,” he began, cheerfully, “well, Marla, my gal. 
I’ve found you out at last — eh ? You didn’t expect me, did you ? 
Well, this is an agreeable surprise for you, because, my dear. 
I’ll take the liberty, being your father and all, of asking what it 
means, and how you make your money ? It’s my duty to see 
that my children are living honest, and my pleasure to advise 
them in their courses.” 

“Go away!” said Valentine. 

The old woman stopped at the foot of the stairs to watch. 
Was he a lawyer ? Was it a jealous one ? 

“ Go away I” Valentine repeated. The man laughed. The 
drink had given him courage. Otherwise he would have obeyed. 

In the front room the dreamer started and looked round ; he 
had heard a voice he knew. 

“ Come,” Mr. Carey whispered, “ let us talk it over friendly. 
Give me a kiss, my dear.” 

He laid his hand upon her shoulder. Valentine shrank from 
him with a cry. Melenda heard her — flew from her room, and 
sprang from the top to the bottom of the stairs with one bound, 
and stood before her. 

“ Now, then, who are you ?” she cried. “ Don’t you be afraid, 
Valentine. It’s only some man who’s been drinking, and come 
to the wrong house ! I ain’t afraid of any man, drunk or sober — 
don’t you mind. Your very last night, too I” 

“ Now, don’t you put your oar in, young woman. You’d best 
stand out of the way, you had 1” 

“ Go out of this,” said Melenda, flrmly, “ or I’ll show you the 
way.” 

“ Well,” he went on, “ if this don’t beat all 1” He steadied 
himself, because the drink made him just a little heavy in the 
head, and just a little uncertain in his speech : “ They ought to 
be proud of me — everybody else would be proud of such a 
man — you’d be proud, you would, my dear — you look like some^ 
body I knew once — you do, indeed — it’s a most remarkable 
likeness 1 There isn’t such another man as me in all London. 
Why, you wouldn’t believe it, from the conduct of that skittish 
little devil there, that I’m James Carey — the great James Carey. 
Everybody has heard of James Carey 1 They used to call me 


404 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


the King of the Burglars. I’m King James the First — his 
Gracious Majesty King Carey. His Royal Highness and Right 
Reverend King Carey !” 

“ Go away !” said Melenda, “ or I’ll tear you in pieces !” 

She hadn’t torn anybody in pieces for some time ; she had 
not even enjoyed the luxury of a Rage Royal since the last day 
of the drilling. Now she looked fierce enough for anything. 
But then a hand was laid upon the man’s shoulder — 

“ Come away,” said Claude — “ come away without a word !” 

“ It’s the hoy,” said the man, with a gush of horrid blas- 
phemy only possible after a wretched man has swallowed com- 
pulsory doses of Scripture for twenty years. “ It’s the adjec- 
tive boy ! What’s he doing here ? Oh ! you think you’ll get 
rid of me, do you? The allowances are to stop, are they?” 
He addressed Claude, because between him and Valentine there 
stood a tigress with hashing eyes and thirsty talons. “ You’ll 
stop yours, will you? Well, we’ll see to that, my young swell, 
and whether you’ll rather pay down, or let me own up — pay 
down, my hoy, or let me own up.” He had not drunk so much 
but that he was perfectly coherent in his speech, hut the drink 
made him foolhardy. 

“ Go !” said Claude. 

“ I shall not go.” He raised his voice and added a volley, 
copious and eloquent, of those flowers of language which are so 
abundant in Ivy Lane as to pass for weeds. “ I shall stay,” he 
concluded, “ all night if I like.” 

By this time a little crowd was gathered round the door, ex- 
pectant of a row. 

Then there happened a strange and wonderful thing. The 
door of the ground-floor front opened, and there came forth, 
slowly and unsteadily, the old man whom they all knew, the 
harmless old man who had lived among them so many years, 
and bad held speech with none. He carried in his one hand a 
lighted candle. The other hand, raised to his shoulder, trem- 
bled and clutched and closed. His face was perfectly white, as 
white as the face of a dead man. His long limbs trembled with 
extreme weakness ; his head was bent forward eagerly ; his 
eyes were glaring. It was actually the face of a dead man with 
living eyes, which gleamed with light supernatural. 

“ Oh !” he said, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, ‘‘ at last I 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


405 


have found mine enemy. I was dying — but I heard his voice. 
The bishop” — ^he turned to Valentine — “the bishop is dying. 
And I was dying. But I knew I was not to die till I had seen 
him once again.” He looked round him as one might look who 
was taking a last farewell of earth, and he gave his candle to 
Valentine as one about to die upon the scaffold hands the last 
thing he values to the last friend beside him. 

“ No man,” he said, solemnly, looking about him, “ hath power 
in the day of death ; neither shall wickedness deliver them who 
are given to it.” Then a very wonderful change passed suddenly 
over his face. It became the face of a young man ; the change 
which sometimes falls upon the face of one who is nearly dead 
fell upon this man’s face before his death. Valentine saw it, 
and knew that she was looking upon the man as he had been, 
save for his white hair, thirty-five years before, while he was yet 
in honor and respect. Mr. Carey saw it, too, and staggered as 
if struck suddenly. 

“ You he said, “ you ? I thought you must be dead long ago.” 
He became instantly sober, as half-drunken men sometimes do. 
Then, as the long, lean figure turned towards him with out- 
stretched arms, he quickly stepped out of the house and fled, 
running through the people. After him, with long, swift strides, 
followed Vengeance, long deferred. It seemed as if no one no- 
ticed them, for no one ran after them, and no one cried after 
them. They passed through the crowd unheeded, and as if un- 
seen. When Claude thought of this afterwards it seemed to him 
a thing beyond and above the natural. Though the streets were 
full of people, this strange flight, this strange pursuit, attracted 
no attention at all, no more than if they were invisible. But he 
who fled was filled with a wild and dreadful terror, that which 
falls upon the heart when some long-forgotten crime springs into 
light, and escape is impossible, and the time of forgiveness is past. 
And he who followed after was filled with such gladness of rage 
and satiated revenge as filled the heart of Fredegonde when, after 
many years, she saw Brunehaut about to be dragged at the heels 
of the wild horse. The fugitive ran in vain, for at his heels, 
though he knew it not, there followed Death, before whom all 
fly in vain. He was in the shape of an old man, striding with 
long steps, bareheaded, his gray hairs flying behind him, in rags, 
with panting breath, white face, and outstretched arms. 


406 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


There is a place beyond St. John’s Road where a bridge crosses 
the canal ; and beyond the bridge there is a way down to the 
bank. It is a dark and narrow way. The man ran down here, 
thinking that he might so escape. But he did not. As he reached 
the towpath the avenging hand was laid upon his shoulder. He 
turned and faced his enemy. Of what should he be afraid ? A 
poor, old, trembling man, who had been starving during all the 
years which he himself had spent in prison, well cared for and 
well fed. He looked so decrepit that James Carey laughed 
aloud and forgot his terror. He had been afraid because he 
had been drinking. That was all. Afraid of a silly old fool, 
too weak to harm a girl. 

“ Man !” cried Mr. Lane, seizing his enemy with both hands and 
shaking him by the coat-collar — “ Man ! give me back my ruined 
life.” 

James Carey would have laughed again, but that his enemy’s 
face became distorted as by sharp and sudden pain — for once 
more, for the last time, came that clutching and tearing at the 
heart — and that his enemy’s legs trembled and his body swayed 
to and fro, and they were on the water’s edge, and the decrepit 
hands, strange to say, held him like a vise. Then there was a 
staggering and a struggle on the gravel, and a cry of agony and 
terror, and a splash in the water — and — and — why, Mr. Lane 
had got back his life, and, with it, had already learned, one hopes, 
why such misery and such weakness as his had been permitted 
even for such an infinitesimal period of time as thirty-five years. 
When the victim recovered his life, what did his tempter and op- 
pressor recover ? 

“ Who was it ?” asked Melenda, when they were gone. 

“ A drunken man,” said Valentine. 

“ But he seemed to know you. And Claude knew him. And 
what had he done to Lizzie’s father ?” 

“ I do not know,” said Claude ; “ but I know4his of him, that 
he is a bad man. Do not ask any more, Melenda.” 

“Well,” said Melenda, “he’s gone^ at any rate. Come up- 
stairs, Valentine.” 

She left them, and went back to Lotty. The old woman, feel- 
ing the florin burn in her pocket, stole out gently, and made for 
the public-house opposite by a circuitous route, namely, half down 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


407 


Ivy Lane and back again, so that she should not seem like going 
out expressly for a drop of gin. She would only have twopenny 
goes, and drink up the rest on the morrow — Sunday. And on 
Monday she would go “ in ” again for the winter. Oh ! this florin 
was a blessed windfall indeed, because now she would be able to 
go back to the House with some of the resignation which ac- 
companies recent gin. The crowd at the door had dispersed, 
disappointed ; there are always more disappointments than real 
rows ; things seldom come off in all their possible fulness. 

“The man is gone, Yalentine,” said Claude. “Do you know 
who he is 

“ Yes, I know him. Something terrible will happen. The 
other man — Lizzie’s father — will do him a mischief ; they are 
old enemies. Oh, it is more wickedness.” 

“If there is to be more trouble,” said Claude, “somebody 
must be here to meet it for you. Go up-stairs, now, Yalentine. 
Good-night.” 

Yalentine obeyed. She did not ask Claude how he came to 
be there ; it was natural that, if she was in any danger, he should 
be there to protect her. Nor did she. ask Claude how he came 
to know the man. 

Meanwhile Claude shut the street door and sat down on the 
stairs and waited. They were very uncomfortable stairs to sit 
upon, being steep and with narrow steps. The candle left in the 
room beside him went on burning until midnight, when it went 
out suddenly, after just one flicker in the socket. Then the stairs 
were in perfect darkness, but the front room was lighted by the 
gas-lamp in the street. Outside the talk of the people grew lan- 
guid, and finally ceased altogether, and the shuffling of their feet 
was heard no more ; the children left off shouting and crying and 
went away to bed ; the public-house shut up, and the men in the 
bar dispersed noisily ; there was an occasional step of a belated 
resident, and then nothing but an echo of steps from Hoxton 
Street or the distant shouting of some drunken man. 

Claude sat on his uncomfortable perch for two or three hours, 
and then he remembered that there was a chair in the next room. 
He changed his position, but he did not allow^ himself to sleep. 
Strange, that the old man did not return ! Had something hap~ 
pened ? His mind was agitated and full of foreboding. 

In the middle of October the nights are long; the sun does not 


408 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


rise until after six. Claude waited and watched through the whole 
of that long night, for seven long hours. Neither of the two men 
came back. As for one, he was probably in the Temple asleep 
on Claude’s bed, or drinking and smoking and fiddling through 
the night. But the other — Lizzie’s father — where was he ? 

And what would come of it all ? What would be the end ? 
As for Valentine, in a few hours she would be safe ; in two 
days more she would know that she was not this man’s daugh- 
ter at all. She knew who he was ; she said so. How did she 
know it ? How much did she know ? There was plenty to oc- 
cupy his thoughts all through the night. 

The morning broke at last — Sunday morning. At the first 
streak of daylight Claude went out into the court, as if expect- 
ing to find there some traces of the missing pair. The air was 
keen and clear ; Ivy Lane, as the light grew stronger, looked in- 
conceivably disreputable, shabby, and dirty, with the wreckage 
and rubbish of a week lying about : the cabbage-stalks, bruised 
plums, rotten apples and pears, the shreds of paper and potsherds. 
Well, Valentine was going away; she was no longer to be con- 
sidered ; he was free, so far as she was concerned. He would go 
to Joe and tell him all ; between the two their mother would be 
protected ; he would give nothing more to his father, and as for 
his real name and the family history, let them both be proclaimed 
upon the housetops, with all the infamy and the shame of it, if 
needs must. 

“ Thank God,” he murmured, “ Valentine is not his daughter !” 

A little before eight there was already some stir among the 
younger and hungrier residents ; the elders lie in bed as long as 
they can on Sunday mornings, and when the bell of St. Agatha’s 
was calling upon a deaf and stiff-necked people to get up and 
come to early celebration, and the assistant priest was hastily 
robing himself for that lonely function, and the shops in Hox- 
ton were getting swept out and garnished for the Sunday-morn- 
ing market, Valentine came down-stairs. 

“ You here already, Claude ?” she asked, surprised. 

“ Why, Valentine, you did not suppose I should go away and 
leave you unprotected, did you ?” 

“You have actually been here all night? You have been 
watching for me ? Oh, Claude ! it is too much !” 

“ Nothing is too much for you, Valentine. Don’t think of me. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


409 


but tell me — what do you know of this man ? Why does ho 
come here ? Why did he follow you V 

“ What do you know, Claude 

I know all that there is to know ; the whole shameful business.” 

“And I, too, know all that there is to know. Do not pain 
yourself to speak about it. I have known the whole story for a 
month — Joe and the mother both think he is dead.” 

“ But how. did you come to know him ?” 

Valentine told her tale, briefly, and passing over one or two 
passages, especially that in which she was constrained to box 
the man’s ears. 

“ I bought his silence,” she concluded ; “ I sent him money 
every week. But I knew that some time or other it would be 
found out. Claude, be brave ; let us take Joe into our confi- 
dence, and devise something that will keep him from the others.” 

“ I bought him, too,” said Claude ; “ but I will give him no 
more money. Thank Heaven, you are out of his reach, and so 
is Violet ; she must never know. As for the others — ” 

“ Let us persuade him to go away, Claude. He may be bribed.” 

“ He will never go away as long as there is a house left in 
England that he has not robbed.” 

There are so many houses in London alone that the prospect 
opened up was more stupendous than the mind of man can well 
take in. And to think, besides, that new houses are always be- 
ing built. 

“ At least, Valentine,” Claude went on, “ you are going home 
this very day. Go at once — if you go now you will find them at 
breakfast — if you stay here there may be, I know not, some terri- 
ble tragedy. I feel as if anything may happen ! Why has not that 
old man been home all night ? And they were enemies, you say. 
Go at once, Valentine, before any scandal happens which may 
involve your name. So much, at least, we owe to Lady Mildred. 
I will get you a cab. Have you anything to pack ?” 

She obeyed. There was nothing that she wished to take 
away. She transferred the care of Lotty to Melenda, kissed the 
girls, promised to return in a day or two, and hurried away, with 
the sense that something was going to happen. 

Claude remained watching in Mr. Lane’s room all the morning. 
Presently Lizzie came down-stairs to see her father, and appeared 
neither astonished nor alarmed to hear that he had not been home 
18 


410 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


all night. He had slept out before, when he had work to do. 
Claude told her nothing of what he knew or suspected. He must 
have gone down Whitechapel way, she said, among the German 
Jews, who regard not the Christian Sabbath when they want 
work done. 

At one o^clock the “Adelaide” opened its hospitable doors, 
and the old lady of the back ground-floor crossed the court, and 
proceeded to spend what was left of her florin. In half an hour 
she came out, with trembling lips and glassy eyes, and returned 
to her own room, where she flung herself upon the floor heavily, 
the door wide open, careless of the world, to sleep off the last 
drink she would get for six months, at least. 

At two, Claude thought he would wait no longer. Perhaps 
his father might have gone to the Temple. 

He had not ; no one was there, and there were no traces at 
all of his presence. Nothing had been taken away, no tobacco 
was on the table, and there were no empty bottles. This was 
very strange. Surely something must have happened ! 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOME AGAIN. 

Claude withdrew from Ivy Lane. Heavens ! without Valen- 
tine how desperately mean and squalid the place appeared ! Even 
Melenda and Lizzie, now neat and “ respectable,” were incongru- 
ous amid such surroundings ! As was Ivy Lane without her, so 
would be his whole life without her. 

He stayed in his chambers all that Sunday afternoon, expect- 
ing a visit from his father. But there was no visit. What was 
he doing? And why had not the old letter-writer returned? 
All day he sat in the quiet rooms looking over the empty courts, 
while his feet were drawn as by a magnet towards the west of 
London. Persons who are afflicted with a constant drought are 
drawn to public-houses as by strings ; but lovers towards their 
mistresses by ropes and hawsers. When it grew dusk he went 
to his club with a sense of safety, because he could not be dis- 
turbed there, and after dinner he repaired to the house where 
he fain would be all day long. 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


411 


“I am very glad to see you again, Claude.” Lady Mildred 
welcomed him with unwonted warmth. “ You have been a brother 
indeed, and more than a brother, to Valentine. She has told me 
all that you have done for her. And now, before you go to see 
the girls — Violet is very well, and is longing to see you again — 
sit down and tell me something about your summer. I am afraid 
you have been a prisoner, from your own point of view. I want 
to know exactly what it is that Valentine has done. All I can 
get from her, except by parenthesis, is an enthusiastic account 
of what you have done. But you are looking ill, my dear boy ; 
ill and worried. Is anything troubling you ?” 

‘‘ Yes ; one or two things are troubling me a great deal. I 
will tell you about them afterwards.” 

Then he began to talk about Valentine’s life among these poor 
folk of Ivy Lane ; and because it was a really fine theme, and he 
had been watching the subject of it closely for three long months, 
during which he had thought of nothing else but the girl and her 
courage and her patience, he spoke eloquently, and even with 
burning words. It was a rare spirit indeed which had persevered 
until Melenda was conquered, which had saved Lizzie and nursed 
Lotty. And if Claude’s lips were touched with flame, and his 
eyes glowed, it was not only because he loved the damsel, but 
also because he admired her deeds. 

Lady Mildred listened, and watched him curiously, as if trying 
to read something unexpressed ; something between the lines. 

“ And your own part in all this, Claude ; you have not spoken 
of yourself?” 

Oh ! my part. I am Valentine’s servant — her vizier.” But 
he hesitated and dropped his eyes, because he would have to 
confess that he had deliberately thrown away all those gods 
which formerly he had worshipped. 

“ More than a servant, Claude, I think. What is this I hear 
about your self-sacrifice ?” 

The young man blushed. Nobody likes to be suddenly ac- 
cused of such a virtue as self-sacrifice, which is at once rare, 
difficult of attainment, and much admired. 

“ It seems to me a very serious thing, this that you propose, my 
dear boy,” Lady Mildred went on. “You have always been ambi- 
tious, from the very beginning. Nobody has begun better than 
you ; none of your contemporaries has a better chance. There is, 


412 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


I am assured by those who know, a really splendid prospect before 
yon. Think well before you throw it away. There is a successful 
practice before you ; in course of time, perhaps, a seat upon the 
Bench — even, in the future, a peerage — anything is possible for 
such a man as you — including, if you are wise enough to wait 
until success is assured, such a marriage, with such connections, 
as will advance your children as well as yourself. Wealth and 
distinction are as certainly within your grasp as can be humanly 
predicted, and you propose to throw them away. Are they things, 
then, of no value to you ? Claude, if you have consented to this 
sacrifice only to please the whim of a girl, I cannot, I must not, 
allow it to be carried into effect without remonstance.” 

“ Valentine has no whims ; she has purposes. But, indeed, 
even if it was at first by her entreaties that I consented to change 
the plan of my life, that no longer remains the only reason. My 
old plans are abandoned of necessity ; there is not left to me any 
choice but a life of obscurity.” 

“ AVhy have you no choice ?” 

“ Do you remember. Lady Mildred, how, long ago, you took me 
to Westminster Abbey to hear a great preacher, and to see the 
tombs of great men ; and to the courts of law to look at the judges 
and hear the barristers ; and to the Academy to see the pictures 
— and to the theatres to see the play ? — and how, everywhere, 
you fired my imagination by telling me that this, and this — and 
everything, was in my reach, if I desired it and chose to work 
for it? You made me the most ambitious of boys. Besides, I 
had to justify things — certain things — ^my education.” 

“ You have nobly justified those things, Claude.” 

“ There never seemed to me anything in the world worth living 
for except distinction and success. And now I have to give up all.” 

“Why, Claude?” 

“ I cannot pretend that it is for the sake of my own people — 
for unselfish motives — I thought I might pretend that, until a 
fortnight ago. And I cannot pretend that it was for love of a 
girl, though there is nothing in the world I would not do for 
Valentine’s sake.” 

“ Claude !” 

“ No, Lady Mildred, she is not my sister — she thinks she may 
be, but I know better — my brother Joe told me the truth. He 
recognized Violet’s resemblance to her father and his own daugh- 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


413 


ter, and I love Valentine. One moment, please. I can no longer 
-think that I am giving up my ambition for her sake. I am only 
a man who must live in obscurity ; I am condemned to it be- 
cause I am overshadowed by a great social disgrace.” 

“ What disgrace, Claude ? What possible disgrace can have 
fallen upon you ?” 

“ It has become impossible that I should continue to live any 
longer among gentlemen. I can no longer pretend to associate 
with them. I must not, for common decency’s sake, sit with them 
or talk with them ; I ought not to have come here, even, without 
letting you know the truth before I came. But I only found it 
out three or four weeks ago. It is my father ” — he stopped short 
with cheeks aflame, for it was a most horrible thing to put into 
words — “ my father is not dead, as I always thought, and as you 
were told. He has been in prison all these years ; he is not an 
honest man, as my brother Joe always declared ; he is a liberated 
convict ; he is at large with a ticket of leave.” 

“ Oh, Claude ! my poor boy, is this true ?” 

“Yes. He flrst made himself known to Valentine, whom he 
took for his own daughter; she stood between him and my 
mother, who does not know — yet. She bribed him to silence ; I 
know all now. Valentine had a terrible time with him. Then 
he broke her conditions and came to me, unknown to her, to my 
chambers, to the Temple. I dare say he is there at this moment, 
drinking and smoking. He takes my money; he pawns my 
things ; he comes at all hours of the day and night. Now you 
know. Lady Mildred, the trouble that has fallen upon me.” 

“ My poor boy !” she repeated. 

“ If I do anything or succeed at all he will be at my elbow, 
selling his own silence. He takes a delight in the shame he inflicts 
upon me. He is, I firmly believe — though he is my own father 
— the worst man that lives. Oh ! can there be,” he cried, with a 
despairing gesture of shame and pain, “ can there be — is there 
anywhere in this great city, a man nearer to the gutter than my- 
self ? Now you understand why I must go away and hide my- 
self. If I do any work it must be for the people from whom I 
sprang — if only in atonement — it must be work that will never 
be spoken about. Is it for me to have ambition? Is such a 
man as myself to ask for distinction ? Why, if I were a judge 
to-morrow, I might have to try my own father. My only friends 


414 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


should be the men like myself, whose fathers are in the jails — 
the sons of the burglars and thieves of London. And now, Lady 
Mildred, you understand, do you not, why I am not ashamed, 
since I have told you all this, to confess that I love Valentine. 
For a man so fettered and held in bonds might as well love a 
princess. All day long I hear my father’s voice, that mocks at 
everything honest and true ; all day long I say to myself : ‘ Go 
back to the slums and work for those who are, like yourself, chil- 
dren of the jail-birds and the outcasts and at night I lie awake, 
waiting for the sound of his footsteps in my room.” 

“ Claude, my poor boy !” 

“ I trust only that Violet will never learn the truth. As for 
the others, sooner or later, they will learn it, I suppose. One 
cannot always keep such a man back, and very soon he will have 
taken all the money I have.” 

“Violet shall never know if I can prevent it. And as for 
yourself — ” 

“ As for me, my course is clear. What other men do for a 
few years and of free choice, able to take up and lay down as they 
please, I must do all my life, and by compulsion. And as for 
Valentine, I shall go on being her servant. You will trust me, I 
know you will trust me, never to let her suspect, by any word of 
mine, that I regard her other than as a sister. I have endeavored 
— I have always hoped and endeavored — to be a gentleman.” 

“ Thank you, Claude.” She pressed his hand with both her own 
in a kindly and motherly fashion. “ You learned very early, my 
dear son, the instincts of a gentleman — there is nothing finer in 
the world than to be a gentleman — and I have always trusted 
you and always loved you. Oh ! my poor boy, I am so sorry for 
you.” For the first time Lady Mildred kissed him. She laid her 
hands upon his shoulders and drew his face to her and kissed 
him on the forehead, while her eyes were full of tears. 

Claude turned his head to hide his own. “ I am glad,” he said, 
“ that I have told you. I can bear it better now that you know.” 

“ Yes, it is better to tell things to people who love you. As 
for Valentine, she will always love you — as your sister. I am 
sure of that. It is good for a young man to love a girl, if she is 
worthy of him, though he can never win her. Go on loving my 
daughter, Claude, and, if you please, believe her to be every- 
thing that a woman can be this side the gates of heaven. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


415 


“ And now,” she added, “ forget your troubles. We will all take 
counsel how to bribe this man into voluntary exile. You shall be 
protected somehow. And Violet shall never know ; and now go 
and make the girls happier, Claude. They are longing for you.” 

It was immediately after this that Lady Mildred explained 
some of her views on the situation to her friend and confidante. 

“ My dear Mildred,” said the latter, “ I cannot believe that any 
good can come of a girl going to live by herself among the scum.” 

“ The scum, Bertha, rises to the top.” 

Then the grounds, or the settlings, of society, with the 
drunken and disreputable people, unprotected. Think of the 
wickedness she must learn.” 

^‘Yes, I suppose that Valentine knows already much more 
wickedness than both of us put together. It is strange to think 
of it. Yet the knowledge does not seem to do her any harm. 
She is as sweet as ever and as good, though she looks more 
womanly. I dare say Eve looked more womanly after she had 
eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but she would 
look guilty as well, which my child does not.” 

“ No, poor thing !” 

“ When you and I were born, Bertha, our fathers mostly called 
the people the Mob, or the Common People, or the Lower Orders, 
or the Lower Classes. They laughed at their ignorance, and ex- 
pected one thing only of them — respect. Things are changed.” 

“ They are indeed !” 

“We cannot afford to laugh at the ignorance of the people 
any more, because we have given them all the power, though 
they don’t know yet that they have got it; but they will find 
out very soon, and then — ” 

“ Oh, Mildred ! don’t say there is going to be a horrid revolu- 
tion, and that we shall all be swallowed up.” 

“ We have had a long rope if we are to be swallowed up. But I 
am not afraid of the English people. And as for the revolution, it 
has been quietly going on all around us for a hundred years. They 
will take away class power, and curtail the power of land and cap- 
ital, Bertha, but they will not guillotine us. We are an orderly 
people, and do not want to murder each other. But the more we 
of our set learn what working people want and think, and how they 
judge things, and the more they, for their part, learn what we think 


416 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


about things, the better it will be for all of us, and the safer. Val- 
entine has learned things which she will never forget. Do you 
think that if there were many girls like her the workmen of this 
country could be made, by any stump orator, to look upon rich 
people as their natural enemies ?” 

“ I like the old ways best,” said Bertha. “ Let the working- 
man go his way, so long as he behaves himself, and let us go 
our way. But what will you do about Claude ? Of course, if 
Valentine should turn out not to be his sister, after all, they can- 
not go on together as they have done.” 

“ That will be for Valentine to determine.” 

“ But, my dear, the young man might so far forget himself as 
to fall in love with her.” 

“ It will be Valentine’s business. She will do as she pleases.” 

“ Would you ? But you could not let your daughter marry a 
young man who has such family connections — a workman 
brother and a working-girl sister ?” 

“ My dear, I think a woman can never do better than marry a 
distinguished man. I married Sir Lancelot because everybody 
said he was distinguished. He has been dead nearly twenty years, 
and everybody has clean forgotten him, so that, I suppose, there 
are certain kinds of distinctions which don’t last. But as for 
Claude, I am sure that he will distinguish himself in a way that 
does last. If one of the girls — the one who is not his sister — 
were to marry him, she might advance him.” 

“ But, of course, they will both love him merely as a brother, 
which is a safeguard.” 

“ I don’t know. The true sisterly feeling does not grow up 
in three months. It wants the long years of childhood.” 

“We have said nothing about Violet,” said Bertha, after a little. 

“ What about Violet ?” 

“ I mean about her future, if she should be Claude’s sister.” 

“ Violet, in any case, will remain with me. She has the artistic 
temperament, which naturally dislikes rude realities and shrinks 
from rough people. Artists are full of emotion and sympathy 
because they are quick to see ; yet they are generally touched 
with a kind of selfishness of their own, which also belongs to 
the temperament. Now, Valentine is not an artist ; she neglects 
the rags, whether they are picturesque or not, and looks for the 
man below them ; she will go back to the rags and roughness, 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


417 


t)ut Violet will remain. Claude will go with Valentine, sister 
or no sister, and Violet will stay with me.” 

“And now I am quite sure,” said Bertha, quickly, “that if 
Valentine had not been your own daughter you would not have 
sent her on this Quixotic errand.” 

“You will know to-morrow.” 

“ Yes,” Bertha repeated, “ I am quite sure. You would never 
have incurred the terrible responsibility of risking another per- 
son’s child. Yes. You are a clever woman, Mildred, but I have 
discovered your secret at last. Well, the son of the soil goes 
back to the soil. That is wonderful, considering what he must 
remember about the place. It is not wonderful at all that Vio- 
let should refuse to return, though she cannot remember any- 
thing, because she can imagine. But it is to me inexplicable 
that Valentine should have wanted to go down there at all, and 
still more wonderful that she should want to return there.” 

“ Here is Claude at last,” cried Violet ; “ Claude at last ! Oh, 
Claude !” She gave him both her hands, and would have liked 
nothing better than to kiss him on both cheeks. “ How glad I 
am to see you again, and Valentine again! Is it really you? 
Sometimes I thought it was all a dream and that there never 
was any Claude. You have made Val thin, Claude, and you are 
thin yourself. And she has been having grave fits and telling 
me dreadful stories about working-girls, poor things.” 

At that moment Valentine was not grave at all. To be back 
again in the old home atmosphere ; to put on again a dress that 
was not the plain gray or brown stuff she had worn for three 
months, but the same dress, or something like it, in which Claude 
had first seen her, a sweet and dainty confection of white, with 
lace ; and to be again with Violet, filled her with happiness. To 
Claude she was always more than mortal. And now she was 
more than a goddess. And she was laughing. Alas 1 had he 
ever once succeeded in making her laugh during the whole three 
months that they had been together every day? Could this 
really be the same girl who only twenty-four hours since was 
shrinking in terror from his — his father — Violet’s father ? 

“ I think it must have been a dream,” Valentine said, “unless, 
perhaps, everything is a dream. The summer, in that case, is 
only just going to begin ; it is still June, and we are considering 
18 * 


418 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


where we shall go. It is like the last scene in the opera which 
is the same as the first, and the heroine wakes up to find that it 
has all been a dream. I suppose there is not any such place as 
Ivy Lane, is there, Claude ? Was there ever a tall old man with 
gray hair named Mr. Lane? He had a daughter in my dream 
called Lizzie, and there was a girl named Melenda, and another 
named Lotty — poor Lotty !” 

“ And another pretending to he Polly-which-is-Marla,” said Vi- 
olet. “ No, dear, it isn’t a dream, and I have had the most dis- 
mal time you can possibly conceive. She looks much too pale, 
Claude. Do you think she has had enough to eat ? Oh, Val, 
how could you live three months by yourself, and among those 
horrid people ? I hope my relatives behaved with tolerable de- 
cency towards you. Did Melenda tear the clothes off your 
back? Did Sam make you a Socialist? Did Joe treat you civ- 
illy ? Tell me, Claude, were they nice at all ?” 

“ Melenda is now my dearest friend,” said Valentine. “ You 
would not know her if you saw her now.” 

“ Oh !” The little interjection implied that Violet had no de- 
sire to know that young lady more intimately. “ And she has 
done everything for herself, Claude. Do you think you ought 
to have permitted it ?” 

“ I am rather ashamed now,” said Valentine, “ of having a 
lady’s-maid.” 

“ She has actually cleaned her own windows and washed her 
own cups and saucers. Yet she hasn’t spoiled her hands. Why 
do all housemaids have red hands, then ?” 

“ I confess that I did not really like cleaning up. But it is 
soon done, and it gives very little trouble.” 

“That depends upon the person,” said Violet; “to me it 
would give all the trouble in the world. I want everything pro- 
vided for me, clean, bright, pretty, and finished, just as if things 
grew so, and would always remain so. I don’t want to know 
who made them — no doubt, unpleasant people — or how they 
came. I like to have everything made for me, brought to me, 
and presented to me, as a matter of course, just as if I were a 
princess by divine right. And oh, if I were a princess, how fer- 
vently I should believe in divine right !” 

“ My dear, you will always have everything just exactly as if 
you were a princess.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


419 


Instead of a — ” 

“ No, Violet, you shall not say it. The strange thing is the way 
in which mistakes are made and young princesses get mixed up 
and served out wrong. Now I am certain that Melenda was meant 
for a despotic sovereign. She would have made an admirable 
czarina in the days when they chopped off heads without trial. 
And Lizzie was born, I am sure, to be a fashionable young lady.” 

“ And what about that other girl who looked delicate and was 
lying down ?” 

“ She is dying, Violet,” said Claude, gravely. 

“ Poor thing ! I suppose there is always somebody dying there. 
We must send her grapes, Val dear.” 

Violet belonged to that large school of philanthropists who would 
treat every painful case with half-a-crown and a basket of grapes. 
And so great is their sympathy with those who suffer that they can- 
not bear even to think of them, much less to talk about them.” 

“ There is tragedy as well as comedy at Hoxton,” said Claude. 

Then they fell to talking again in a lighter strain, and they 
were so happy at being together again that they talked the great- 
est nonsense imaginable. Claude forgot his troubles and laughed 
with them, though, for all three, the tears were close behind the 
laughter, just as in the pools which are sometimes geysers, the 
bubbles on the surface show the agitation of the waters below. 
As for Valentine, this return to an atmosphere of peace, where 
there could be eareless talk, was like the wandering down a green 
glade, beside a little brook, with the birds singing, and the flow- 
ers at her feet, after a long sojourn in the hot and thirsty sands. 
She had never appreciated it before. This possibility of care- 
less talk, as if there were no misery in the world that she could 
cure or eause or that eoncerned her. An atmosphere of peace. 
It is, if you think of it, the choicest possession of the easy 
classes. Yet they share it with the shepherd on the hillside and 
the gamekeeper in the woods. Those who live in crowded streets 
and narrow courts, in tenement houses or in model lodgings, can 
never breathe this atmosphere of peace. All around them is the 
buzz and humming of their fellows — not a peaceful murmur as 
of bees, but an angry, dissatisfied, suffering sound, made up of 
groans and oaths and lamentations, as well as of the laughter of 
children and the shouts of those who play. 

And Claude was wondering whether the Valentine of this 


420 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


evening could be really tbe same girl wbo, twenty-four hours 
before, stood in the doorway shrinking with terror from a half- 
drunken and unrepentant convict who called himself her father. 
In his inexperience, he made no allowance for reaction. One is 
never so completely folatre as on the day after a period of great 
anxiety. Gentlemen, for instance, who have been locked up for 
a short term are said to exhibit a larklike blitheness and vivacity 
at the “ friendly lead ” which follows their release. 

Then Claude wondered, looking at the two girls, how he could 
ever have entertained the least doubt as to the real Beatrice, 
for he saw now that the face of Violet was Joe’s face, and his 
own face, and his father’s face. And her voice was Joe’s, and 
his own, and — his father’s ; a soft and sweet voice in her, and in 
the men a low and musical voice. How could any one have 
ever doubted ? To be sure, when he saw Violet for the first time 
he had not yet seen his father, and he thought less about Joe 
than about Melenda and Sam. Now Violet w’as not in the least 
like Sam and Melenda, who, as we know, “ favored ” their mother. 

Authorities are divided as to whether at its best the masculine 
or the feminine countenance is the more perfect from the artis- 
tic point of view. Yet one would have liked, in the days when 
there was the strongest feeling on the subject, to have said unto 
Zeuxis : “ Just figure for me in undying colors the most beauti- 
ful girl-face that exists anywhere around the shores of the Med- 
iterranean.” English girls about that time were still in the rough, 
somewhere among the Hercynian forests. “ Next, paint me the 
same face in its masculine form, and then the same face as a 
child, as a boy, as a girl, and as an old man, and as an old wom- 
an, so that in every age we may have the most perfect type of 
beauty.” I think that Violet would have done very well for the 
first type and Claude for the second. Horrible to think of the 
same face grown old, and marked with the seal that stamps the 
prison-bird ! His own face, Claude clearly discerned, and his 
father’s face, were both so plainly drawn in Violet’s that he 
wondered how there could ever have been the slightest doubt. 
But very few, of those concerned, had had the pleasure of mak- 
ing Mr. James Carey’s personal acquaintance. 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


421 


CHAPTER XXXIL 

THE FINDING OF THE INQUEST. 

When Claude went back to bis chambers, he was disappoint- 
ed in not finding them already occupied by an elderly gentle- 
man with gray hair, and a fiddle in his hand, and a pipe in his 
mouth. He fully expected to find that gentleman in occupation ; 
he expected to hear him fiddling as he went up the stairs ; in 
fact, he had made up his mind while walking home what he 
should say to him, arid he arranged a dramatic scene, short but 
very effective. He would begin by saying, firmly and calmly, 
“ You have broken the conditions. I shall therefore discontinue 
your allowance. You will get no more money from your sup- 
posed daughter ; and I will take care that the others shall give 
you nothing. If you attempt to worry my mother she shall be 
taken out of the almshouse, and placed under proper protec- 
tion.” At this point his parent would probably break out into 
that rude eloquence which is known in Ivy Lane as “ language.” 

Then Claude would go on — “ I will, however, allow you twen- 
ty-five shillings a week, on the condition that you go out of the 
country — to Guernsey, or Jersey, or somewhere.” A certain 
amount of filial piety (how much filial piety ought to be ex- 
pected towards a father who turns out so badly ?) would suffer 
him to be regardless of the language, but he would be firm in 
refusing to give him anything, except on that one condition. 
Filial piety, he was sure, was consistent with starving a parent 
into submission, so long as submission is good for his children. 
This reduction of obstinacy once effected, one might again con- 
sider the Fifth Commandment and its bearings on the case, and 
how one might contrive to scrape together, somehow, in obedi- 
ence to the injunction, a little, if ever so little, honor for one’s 
father; just as the toper squeezes the empty bottle and the 
miser skins the fiint. 

Somehow these previously arranged dialogues and dramatic 


422 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


situations never come off as they are intended, so that one always 
has to fall back upon impromptu words and unforeseen tableaux. 

His chambers were empty ; the windows were dark ; there 
was no one in King’s Bench Walk, except the ghosts of the dead 
lawyers, who have long since driven away the ghosts of the 
Knights Templars, and now walk nightly in wigs and gowns, a 
merry troop, laughing and telling each other the old circuit stor- 
ies of which barristers are never tired ; the stairs echoed to no 
other footsteps than his own ; no one waited for him on the land- 
ing ; there was no one in the room. 

Well, his father had only postponed his visit, that was clear ; 
he would come in the night, or next day, or the day after, be- 
cause no more money would be sent to him, and he must sooner 
or later come to terms, because he had no means of getting any. 
That he would go to Tottenham appeared unlikely, because there 
was nothing to be got out of a poor old almswoman. There was, 
indeed, another possibility, which Claude did not take into ac- 
count, as it was a thing quite outside his own experience. He 
forgot that his father had a profession — not, it is true, one of 
the learned professions, but yet a profession which requires the 
greatest dexterity, a brain full of resource, an eye keen to watch 
for opportunity, vulpine stealth, and that kind of natural apti- 
tude which, when applied to the arts of poetry, the drama, and 
fiction, we call genius. What was there to prevent Mr. Carey 
from resuming the active practice of that profession ? This, in- 
deed, conducted with the greatest caution, and, if necessary, sup- 
plemented by an occasional levy upon his son and daughter, was 
the scheme of life contemplated by the enlarged captive. He 
nourished thoughts, also, of a second course of public glory ; he 
would again be the head of the profession. Fate, as too often 
happens, prevented the accomplishment of this design ; other- 
wise, the end of Mr. Carey’s history, and of this story, would 
have been different. 

Then Claude, with dismal forebodings of a nocturnal visit, 
went to bed. The Temple was perfectly quiet ; there was no 
noise from the river, which by day is not at all a silent highway, 
and none from the Embankment ; there were no steps on the 
gravel and in the court below. He lay awake waiting for the 
soft footfall which he knew and dreaded, or for the light click 
of the burglar’s key unlocking his door ; once or twice he 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


423 


thought that the man must be actually in his rooms, and he got 
up and looked into his keeping-room in order to satisfy himself. 
Two or three more such nights as this, and he should go mad ; 
when at length he did fall asleep, worn out by the long vigil of 
Saturday night and by his own anxieties, it was to dream that 
his father stood by his bedside threatening that he would never 
leave him ; that he would remain with him night and day, all the 
rest of his life ; that he would never be out of his sight or out 
of his thoughts for a single moment. 

That dream will in a way be fulfilled ; Claude will never cease 
to have his father with him ; he “ can never ” be out of his 
thoughts. Yet this nightmare will not come true in the sense 
in which it was first understood. 

All the morning he remained in his chambers, expecting this 
visitor, or at least a letter or some kind of message, if only a 
threatening message. None came at all. The very silence itself 
was threatening, and all the more because its threatenings were 
as vague and uncertain as the distant roll of thunder. 

In the afternoon Claude resolved to wait within no longer. 
He would go to Tottenham and satisfy himself that his mother 
had not been molested. 

She had not. He found her walking with her granddaughter, 
Rhoda, in the sunshine on the flags. She was quite calm and 
undisturbed ; there was ho reason for asking her any questions. 

Her husband had not been near her, that was certain, since 
the day when Valentine bought him off. But for her part she 
asked a thousand questions about Lady Mildred, and how her 
daughter had been received, and when she would come back 
again to see her mother. 

“ I wouldn’t stand in her light, Claude, not if I was never to 
see her again.” Like all blind people, she spoke of seeing her 
friends just as if she still had the use of her eyes. “ And if 
she’s happy she must not think too much about me. Not but 
that she will, for she’s that affectionate in her nature that she 
loves all that loves her, and thinks about them day and night. 
Give me a loving-hearted girl, Claude. Why, as for you, she 
loves the very ground you tread upon.” Claude started and 
blushed ; one need not blush at being loved by one’s sister, but 
only Rhoda saw the blush, and she was selfishly thinking about 
her own little ambitions, not about Claude at all. And there- 


424 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


fore, thoiigh she observed some evidence of emotion, she did not 
connect it with any cause. “ If you were her sweetheart, my 
son, she couldn’t love you better. She’ll sit and talk about you 
all day long, she will, and never get tired ; and makes me tell 
her again and again, just like as if she w’^as a little girl again, 
how you took to your book when you was only a little boy, and 
how you were sent to a grand school by her ladyship, and how 
you got all the prizes and brought them here for me to see and 
feel their beautiful leather covers. Oh! she’s a good sister, 
Claude, as well as a good daughter.” 

“ I suppose she loves Joe and Sam quite as well.” 

“ Not she, then. She’s uppish, you know, and Joe, he’s a 
good boy, but he’s only a working-man, you see. He hasn’t 
got your fine ways ; and as for Sam, he’s hardly civil with any- 
body, is he ?” 

“I am glad you think she loves me, mother,” said Claude, 
meekly. “ But then, of course, it’s natural to love her brother, 
isn’t it?” 

“ Of course it is, my dear. You don’t make half enough of 
her, Claude. As for talking about her, you never do. Nor 
about yourself either, lately. You’ve got to be silent, my dear 
boy. There isn’t any trouble, is there ? You haven’t got caught 
by some artful hussy, I hope ?” 

In Mrs. Monument’s view, if one of her sons fell in love, he 
must be caught by an artful hussy. Such is the opinion which 
women in certain circles entertain as to girls and their wiles. 
To be sure, a mother is difficult to please in the matter of 
daughters-in-law. 

“ No, mother, there is no artful hussy in the case, I assure 
you. And as for loving Valentine, I am certain no brother in 
the whole world loves his sister so much. I can say nothing too 
good for her. Never dream that I do not think about Valentine, 
mother.” 

“That’s well said, Claude. That’s a brave boy. Brothers 
don’t generally care about their sisters, more’s the pity. If they 
did there’d be many a poor girl saved from trouble.” 

Then Claude went to Ivy Lane, getting there about six o’clock, 
just before dark. It struck him that the street was unusually 
animated for the time of day, and he might have guessed that 
so many people would not have been gathered together at six 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


425 


in tlie evening without some cause. However, lie passed through 
them, and so to the house. The front room was still empty, 
and from the position of the chair, which was exactly where he 
had left it, it seemed as if no one had been there since he left it. 
Therefore the old man had not yet returned. He looked into 
the back room ; this also was empty. In fact, the old lady, who 
could no longer do without a fire, had that very morning changed 
her residence for the winter and gone where, whatever may be 
their faults, they do keep up a good fire, namely, to the House, 
and was already dressed in the blue -and -white check which 
forms the neat and tasty uniform of the place, and had con- 
sumed in gin the last twopence of Mr. Carey’s fiorin,/ and was 
looking forward with resignation to six or seven months of tem- 
perance and regular hours. 

Claude went up-stairs. Melenda’s room was open, but no one 
was in it. Melenda herself was sitting in Valentine’s room, with 
Lotty, who was asleep. 

She ran to meet Claude with some signs of agitation. 

“ Oh, Claude I” Melenda came out hurriedly, “ I am so glad 
you are come again. Something dreadful’s happened. Hush ! 
I don’t want Lotty to hear.” 

“ What is it ?” 

“ It’s Lizzie’s father. He’s dead.” 

“ How did he die ?” 

“ I don’t know. It was this morning that a policeman came 
and asked if there was a man lived here named Lane, and we 
called Liz, and she said yes, and he was her father ; and he said, 

‘ Then your father’s dead,’ he said, ‘ and you’d better come along 
o’ me,’ he said ; and she went. And I can’t leave Lotty, and 
there’s nobody in the house but us two. Oh ! dear. I never 
thought we should miss Valentine so soon.” 

Outside the house the people were talking together in knots 
of two and three. They spoke in low voices, as people talk in 
the presence of the dead. 

Now, while Claude looked about him for some one to ask or 
to advise him, there strolled leisurely into the street none other 
than his brother Joe. 

“ You here, Joe !” 

‘‘Why, Colonel,” said Joe, slowly, ‘I sez to myself when we 
knocked off to-day, I sez, ‘ There’s Melenda with that sick girl, 


426 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


and the young lady gone, and p’r’aps they want a bit o’ help or 
advice.’ So I came down the road in the tram, and here I am.” 

“ Well, Joe, it strikes me that we shall all want as much ad- 
vice and help as we can get before very long.” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir ” — one of the women detached her- 
self from the group and accosted Claude ; “ you knew the poor 
old man, sir. I’ve seen you here with the young lady.” 

“ Yes, I knew the old man ; what has happened ?” 

“ They picked him up in the canal, and they’ve got him at 
the Stag’s Head in the Canal Road. Lizzie’s gone there, too, for 
the inquest.” 

Found in the canal ! Claude felt sick and dizzy. How did 
the man get there ? and in whose company was he last seen ? 

“ What’s the matter, young ’un ?” asked Joe, surprised. 
“ What makes you so white in the gills ?” 

“ Come with me, Joe ; I’m afraid we shall find out soon 
enough.” 

In the parlor of the Stag’s Head, on the great table dented 
and battered with a thousand hammerings of pewter pots at 
friendly leads and the emphasizings of a thousand toasts at 
lodge meetings — for a lodge of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes 
met here — and club meetings, there lay a shapeless heap, cov- 
ered over with a white sheet. A policeman sat in the room, not 
for fear of those who break in and steal, but out of respect to 
what was under the sheet. In a far corner — as far as she could 
get from the table — sat Lizzie, looking scared and frightened. 

“ Oh !” she cried, “ you’ve come at last — I knew you’d come. 
Don’t go away, please. There’s to be an inquest directly, and 
I’ve got to give evidence. Oh ! lam so frightened.” 

“ Don’t be afraid, my gal,” said Joe ; “ we won’t go away till 
you’ve done.” 

“ Father’s dead,” she whispered. 

“ I know,” said Claude. “ But, Lizzie, is there no other place 
than this for you to wait ?” 

“ There’s only the bar, but it’s full of men drinking, and they 
keep asking questions.” 

“ How was it ?” 

“ I don’t know. They are there — under the sheet. You can 
look if you like.” 

“ Who are they 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


427 


“ Why, the other — I don’t know who he is. They found them 
together.” 

“ If you knew the deceased, either of you,” said the police- 
man, “ you might give evidence. The jury are called for half- 
past seven.” 

He laid back a corner of the sheet and showed the face of 
the dead man. It was perfectly calm and peaceful ; the lips had 
dropped into a smile ; the eyes were closed in what looked like 
the sleep of a child. The long white hair lay upon the pillow on 
which they had placed his head, as if reverent hands had dis- 
posed it to the best advantage, so as to serve as a frame for the 
beautiful waxen mask of a face. The poor old scribe had got 
what he demanded of his enemy ; he had got back his life. 
What more could he desire ? 

“ Oh ! isn’t father beautiful ?” Lizzie whispered. “ He was a 
gentleman once, before he got into trouble. Don’t he look like 
a gentleman again ?” 

He looked perfectly peaceful and happy. He looked like one 
who had spent his life wholly in the contemplation of things 
saintly and the working of things holy. The dead bishop lying 
on his bed could not look more holy. But there was more be- 
neath the sheet. 

The policeman rolled back the sheet a little farther and dis- 
covered a second head. There was, as Lizzie explained, another 
body found with her father’s. It lay upon its side facing the 
first. The limbs were writhing when they were fixed in death ; 
the face was distorted, wild, and full of horror, with open and 
staring eyes which still seemed to see something inexpressibly 
terrible and fearful. The right hand of the first corpse held the 
coat-collar of the second as if dragging an unwilling and con- 
science-stricken prisoner to justice. 

This was Claude’s father. A terrible death after a shameful 
life. The thought that it was his father, whatever the life, what- 
ever the death, touched him with such pity as one might feel for 
one who was not a disgraceful father. All was finished now, the 
persecution, and the extortion, and the dread. No more to be 
feared from him. Only room now for the thought of what he 
might have been. 

“ That’s just how they were found,” said the policeman, “ only 
this one’s left hand, you see, was clutching the other side of the 


428 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


coat-collar as well, but the hook tore the collar. No one saw 
them roll in ; no one seems to know how they fell in. Looks 
like a quarrel, don’t it ? But they’re both oldish men, and the 
one with the gray hair looks near seventy. Men of seventy 
don’t quarrel and fight, do they ? Not as a rule, says you. The 
young woman here is ready to identify her father, but no one 
seems to know anything about the other man. Looks respect- 
able, doesn’t he ? Got new boots, and good boots too, and new 
clothes. Here’s his hat” — too well Claude knew that hat ! “ It 
was picked up on the bank. Oldish man, but he looks as if he’d 
got a good bit o’ life left in him still ; wiry kind o’ face, isn’t 
it? Didn’t like tumbling in, seemingly. Was it one tried to 
push the other in? Were they in drink? Nothing in their 
pockets ; not a penny ; only a scrap of paper in this one’s 
pocket with the name of Lane, Ivy Lane, Hoxton, on it. Not 
a penny ; at least that’s what the bargees say who pulled ’em 
out. ’Tain’t likely there would be a penny after they’d had the 
run of the pockets.” Claude thought of asking whether there 
had not been found a watch and chain — his own watch and 
chain, in fact — but he refrained in time. “ Why, man alive,” 
said the policeman to Joe, “haven’t you ever seen a dead body 
before ?” 

In fact, Joe was gazing with open mouth and hanging hands ; 
his cheeks were white, and he seemed unable to tear his eyes 
from the sight before him. Just so, Claude felt, he must him- 
self have appeared when first his father announced himself in 
his chambers. In the feeling and beautiful language of our an- 
cestors, Joe “ was confounded, and his jaws stuck.” 

“Why, Joe,” said Claude, “what’s the matter? Sit down, 
man, and don’t look at them any longer.” He covered the 
bodies again with the sheet. “ Nothing at all in this man’s 
pockets. Nothing in his pockets. No letter, or card, or ad- 
dress. Why, perhaps you will not be able to identify him.” 

“ Perhaps not,” said the policeman. “ As for this one, we 
know him through his daughter.” 

“We know him too,” said Claude. “We are come to do 
what we can for his daughter.” 

“ And as for the other, why, very likely he’ll never be identi- 
fied at all; there’s a many bodies that never do. They are 
country people, for the most part, and they get into bad com- 


CHILDEEN OF GIBBON. 


429 


pany and mischief ; or they’re foreigners perhaps, and it’s bad 
company with them, too ; and no one asks after them, and when 
they don’t come back to their hotels, presently their boxes are 
opened and sold, and nothing said.” 

“Very likely he will never be identified at all,” Claude re- 
peated, slowly and with emphasis, looking at his brother. “ Joe, 
do you feel better? We both know this girl, who is very re- 
spectable, and there will be no difficulty in identifying her fa- 
ther, at any rate.” 

Joe retired to the bar, where he had a glass of brandy neat, 
and tried to pull himself together, but with small success. For 
he had seen his father again. After all these years, he remem- 
bered him instantly — and his father was dead. 

As regards his former statement concerning his father’s death, 
it had been, of course, fabricated and invented by himself with- 
out the least authority. He made that statement for the ease 
and satisfaction of his mother. When a man of over forty goes 
into compulsory retirement for a period of five-and-twenty years, 
which is equivalent to twenty years at least, one may be justified 
in supposing that he will never come out again ; though, from 
time to time, Joe asked himself what would happen if his father 
were after all to come out and to find his way to the almshouse, 
and what his own missus would say, and what Claude and Sam 
and Melenda, from all of whom the truth had been carefully 
hidden, would say. Once the fiction was invented, J oe satisfied 
his conscience, which was not more than reasonably tender, by 
the assurance that his father could never live to complete his 
sentence. 

He had lived, then, and he had presumably received his ticket 
of leave, and he was out. How long he had been out, or what 
he had done since he came out, what friends he had made, who 
knew his secrets, Joe knew not. His father was out of prison, 
and he was dead ; he was discovered drowned like a rat in a 
ditch. Suppose the policeman were to ask him if he knew the 
body. Suppose they were to seize him and put him in the wit- 
ness-box, what should he say ? Why had he come there with 
Claude ? 

Presently the jury came, and the inquest was held. They were 
mostly householders who kept small shops in the neighborhood ; 
they came rather sulkily, but they went through the business 

Ee 


430 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


conscientiously, and as if they had experience of coroners’ in- 
quests, and how they should be conducted. 

The court was held in a dingy room — the bar-parlor — after 
the jury had viewed the bodies. Claude and Joe stood in the 
doorway and looked on. The witnesses were ealled ; the two 
boatmen who deposed that they saw a hat lying on the towing- 
path, and the marks of the trampling of feet, or some kind of 
struggle, on the gravel ; that they dragged the canal, and almost 
immediately pulled up the two bodies locked together in a deadly 
embrace just as they now lay upon the table — one man holding 
the other as if he were trying to shove him under ; that they 
searched the pockets and found nothing except, in one pocket, 
writing materials with a name and address — both men were very 
clear and decided upon that point; that they had called the 
nearest policeman, who also searched the pockets and found 
nothing. The policeman, in his evidence, did not express sur- 
prise on this point. Then they put up Lizzie, who identified 
her father as one who lived by writing letters for Germans and 
Poles, especially Polish Jews; he was very poor, she said, and 
as for the other man, she had never seen him, and her father 
was one of those who have no friends. It was fortunate, Claude 
reflected, that Lizzie had not been present at the disturbance on 
Saturday evening. 

He might himself have given evidence. But to what effect ? 
That he was a barrister and a Fellow of Trinity ; that one of the 
dead men was his own father, a ticket-of -leave man and a notori- 
ous evil-liver, whom he was himself supporting on certain con- 
ditions ; that this convict broke one of these conditions on Satur- 
day evening, and forced himself upon a young lady, the daughter 
of Lady Mildred Eldridge, whom he took for his own daughter ; 
that at sight of the other man, novr also lying dead, he broke 
away and fled, and the other ran after him, and that they were 
no more seen. This was a strange story to tell in this bar-parlor 
before the Hoxton jurymen. Further inquiry would be demand- 
ed, and Valentine herself would have to give evidence, and then 
there would be a beautiful case for the papers. 

Joe, too, might have given evidence. He stood in terror that 
he should be called upon to do so. His evidence would at least 
have satisfied the police that one of their worst offenders was 
gone to another court of justice. He listened with open mouth 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


431 


and pale cheeks. When the coroner charged the jury, he trem- 
bled and shook ; when the verdict was returned, he gave a great 
gasp of relief. 

As for the summing up of the coroner, nothing could he more 
simple. These two men, he said, were evidently drowned to- 
gether. They might have been quarrelling, but there was noth- 
ing to prove it ; they might have been drinking together, which 
seemed much more likely, because they had not apparently 
robbed each other, neither having anything to lose. One of the 
men — the one identified — was very old and feeble ; the other 
was well advanced in life. The one identified appeared also to 
be quiet and respectable. Men of that age do not, certainly, go 
out and fight when they are sober ; the very unfrequented nat- 
ure of the place where they were found pointed, perhaps, to the 
theory of drink. One slipped, perhaps, and dragged the other 
in with him; or one was drowned in an attempt to save the 
other. As for the uncalled-for remark of the bargemen that it 
looked as if one were trying to shove the other under, that was a 
conclusion formed without any facts to warrant it, and they 
might just as well consider that it looked as if one man was try- 
ing to pull the other out. The jury without any delay found a 
verdict of “ Found drowned and to this verdict every man 
aflfiixed his name and seal. 

The case was over. No one now will ever know, except his 
two sons, when and where James Carey died ; and they know no 
more than that he was drowned. 

As they walked away, Joe, who had taken a second glass of 
brandy after the finding, and yet looked pale and trembled, be- 
gan to explain things. 

“ You saw that I was took aback, young ’un, by the sight of 
them two bodies ?” he began. 

“ Yes, I saw that, Joe. Very much took aback you were.” 

“ Well, now, don’t you tell the mother what I’m going to tell 
you. Don’t you let on to no one, Claude, and I will tell you the 
truth, and why I was took aback. Which I do not deny it.” 

“ I will not tell anybody, Joe. Go on.” 

Claude perceived from his brother’s anxious face as well as 
from the general situation, that Joe’s imaginative and creative 
faculties were about to be called into play, on a larger and more 
active scale than usual. 


432 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


“ Well, then, it’s like this. Father, you know — 

“ Who died so many years ago.” 

“ Yes, him. Who died so many years ago, poor old chap ! I 
don’t think, Claude, I ever quite got over the blow of his death ; 
for, says I, though but a youngster at the time, where in the 
world shall I ever find another father who’ll be such a honest 
and respectable father as him who’s been took ? But what you 
never have been told, nor any of the others, is, that father had 
a brother. That’s where it is. Yes, he had a brother — a twin- 
brother — just exactly like himself : same age, same height, same 
hair, same colored eyes. So like him that you might have taken 
them two for each other. People have been known to make that 
mistake ; and once he — the twin-brother, I mean — got off, be- 
cause he got fifty people to swear he was handing round the 
plate at chapel at the very time that the burglary was committed 
— namely, church-time. But, bless you, it was father, not him, 
that carried round the plate ! They wouldn’t ha’ trusted him 
with a plate if there was only twopence in it. Besides, he never 
went to church nor chapel. If they had a trusted him with the 
plate, he’d a sneaked it, money and all.” 

The narrator felt that he was really getting on splendidly. 

“Well, Joe r 

“Well — father — you know — father — he was just about as 
steady and as honest as they make ’em. Once they gave him 
a silver mug for his honesty, and it was put into the Sunday 
papers. I remember that very well.” 

“ Yes, Joe, I think I remember something of it, too.” 

“ You can’t very well, Claude— that is, you can’t remember 
much of it, because it was before you were born. But you go 
on being proud of your father. You stick rs tight as wax to 
your pride, my boy.” 

“ I will, Joe — I will. I’ll be just as proud of him as if he had 
never had a twin-brother at all.” 

“ Well, as for that precious twin — that other chap — he was a 
reg’lar bad ’un. He was so bad that father never let him come 
into the house where, he said, honesty alone should shake a leg.” 
Claude laughed, but begged his brother to continue. “ What- 
ever good there was about father was bad about that other chap. 
If one was sober, the other drank like a fish ; and if one was a 
steady workman, the other one never did a day’s work in his 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


433 


life ; if one got silver mugs for good character, the other was 
always going off to quod for roguery. He was a burglar, too, and 
proud of it. Father got at last not to speak to him — wouldn’t 
own to him — wouldn’t help him — wouldn’t have nothing to say 
to him. But it made no difference, whether father argued with 
him or whether he walloped him, it was all the same. A reg’lar 
confirmed had ’un, he was.” 

“ I suppose he got into trouble pretty often, didn’t he ?” 

He did so, Claude. He got into trouble a heap of times ; 
he was ’most always in trouble, and at last he got a long sentence. 
I thought he must be dead, Claude, I did indeed. And what 
struck me all of a heap, sudden-like, when I see that body, was 
to reckonize that it was nothing else in the world but the body 
of that — very — same — twin-brother. There ! Now you know 
why I was took aback. I thought he was dead ever so long ago. 
And if I’d had to give evidence I should ha’ had to say that he 
was father’s twin-brother — a ticket-of -leave man, Claude” — his 
voice dropped — “ on’y a ticket-o’-leave man.” 

“That was very strange, Joe. Hadn’t we better keep this 
story to ourselves ? There are always bad hats in every family, 
and it does no good to talk about them, does it ? Besides, con- 
sidering we’ve had a father who is such a credit to all of us that 
we are never tired of talking about him, what does it matter 
about this uncle — this twin-brother ?” 

“ Right, lad, right,” cried Joe, brightening up. “ What does 
it matter, after all ? We won’t tell Sam, will we ? Nor yet Me- 
lenda, nor yet my missus and the young ’uns. There’s no need 
to let ’em know now, and him dead and all, that their father’s 
twin-brother was such an out-and-out reg’lar bad ’un.” 

Joe’s readiness of invention thus extricated him from a great 
difficulty, and he has ever since congratulated himself upon his 
resource and the fertility of his imagination, which enabled him 
so readily to make Claude believe in the existence of the twin- 
brother — the out-an’-outer — and in the exemplary character of 
his father. 

It is the privilege of the parish to bury, at the expense of the 
ratepayers, such persons as die poor or friendless within their 
borders. The parish funeral is not a costly matter ; the parish 
undertaker does not generally retire from business with a large 
fortune ; and things are not always ordered at these functions 
19 


434 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 

with as much solemnity as the relations might desire. There- 
fore it was felt to be a kindly act when Claude undertook to 
provide the funeral expenses for both these poor men. He 
“followed” in person, accompanied by Lizzie, who was sup- 
ported by Melenda. Joe did not appear. Thus, the hawk and 
the pigeon, the wolf and the lamb, lay down in death, side by 
side, together. 

In such a case as this, the words of the funeral service pro- 
duce upon the bystanders something of an incongruous effect. 
Did Mr. James Carey really entertain the sure and certain hope 
spoken of by the chaplain at the last moment when his soul 
came bubbling up to the surface of the dark canal? Did he 
hear that voice that cried, “Blessed are the dead which die in 
the Lord ?” Pity that prayers for the dead are not encouraged 
by the Church ; one would have preferred, for such a funeral 
service, a few words of supplication in the deepest humility on 
behalf of a sinner most horribly unrepentant, together with a 
word of thankfulness on behalf of those from whom his death 
had averted so much misery and disgrace. 

Claude gave to each of the girls a wreath. “ Lay yours,” he 
whispered to Lizzie, “ on the stranger’s coffin. Say, ‘ I have for- 
given.’ ” 

Lizzie did as she was told, thinking it was part of the service. 

“ Lay yours on Lizzie’s father, Melenda,” he whispered her. 
“ Say, ‘ Forgive the father for the daughter’s sake.’ ” 

Melenda, too, did as she was told. She knew that there was 
a mystery and that it was Valentine’s secret. Therefore she 
made no search into it, and never spoke of it, and no one, now, 
knows the complete history of James Carey and Mr. Lane except 
Claude and Valentine, and, as we have seen, even they do not 
know all the concluding chapter. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

COMING OF AGE. 

Never was there any coming of age which more nearly re- 
sembled a funeral. The daughter of Sir Lancelot Eldridge should 
have attained her majority in her own country-house ; there 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


435 


should have been joy-bells and treble bob-majors, Venetian 
masts with streamers and flags, bands of music, bouquets for 
everybody, dances on the village-green, treats for the children, 
sports and athletics for the young men, a great ball at the house 
and half the county invited to it, and, to crown the whole, the 
heartfelt, outspoken rejoicings of an affectionate, grateful, loyal, 
contented, industrious, respectful, and scrupulously clean tenantry 
and peasantry. We all know how respectful, loyal, and affection- 
ate are the peasantry and tenantry of England, Scotland, Ireland, 
and Wales. 

The family solicitor came, a young gentleman of thirty or so, 
accompanied by his junior partner, who was not quite so young 
by forty years or so, and carrying a great box of papers. They 
arrived at about eleven, and were taken into the library. The 
girls heard their steps, and felt somehow as one feels when the 
undertaker calls. 

Claude was with them, and the conversation languished, be- 
cause one of the three was anxious, and two were stricken with a 
sense of guilt. These were the two who had already discovered 
the secret. When Lady Mildred came to them, she found the 
two girls sitting hand in hand, and Valentine with hanging head 
and burning cheeks. 

She looked at them for a moment with troubled eyes ; then she 
held out her hands, and they sprang to their feet, and fell upon her 
neck, one on each side, and I think that all three were crying — 
those tears which flow freely and readily from women’s eyes and 
express every emotion, whether of joy, or sorrow, or sympathy. 

“ My dears,” she said, “ I thought it would be easy to tell you. 
It used to seem a small thing that I should have some day to 
say to one of yon, ‘ My dear, you are not my daughter.’ But it 
is not a small thing, children ; it is a very hard thing. I have 
done, I fear, a grievous wrong to one of you, because Beatrice 
must have her own property ; and Polly must have her brother, 
and you will no longer be equal.” 

“ Beatrice can give Polly half her fortune,” said Valentine. 

“ Polly can never take any of the fortune,” said Violet. “ But 
Claude can still be brother to both of us.” 

Valentine made no reply to this proposition. That was be- 
cause she had known for three months that he was not her broth- 
er. This kind of knowledge entirely changes one’s views as re- 


436 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON, 


gards fraternal affection. She knew, by this time, that a broth- 
er cannot be shared. He is one and indivisible, like a strawberry. 

“ My other daughter,” Lady Mildred went on, looking straight 
between them, “ forgive me for bringing you up in ignorance. 
At first, when 1 took you from your mother, I thought chiefly of 
helping a very poor and heavily-burdened woman. I thought 
little about the child^s future. Then, when I placed her beside 
my own little girl, and saw how pretty she was, and how win- 
ning, and how dainty, I thought how it would be to bring both 
up together, and not to let either know which of the two was 
the gentlewoman, and how it would be curious to watch them 
both, and I wondered whether birth would show. My dear chil- 
dren, what has been shown ? Why, that there is no difference 
— not the slightest difference — between you. You have proved 
that there are, in every condition of life, children who may be 
trained and educated to have the manners and the instincts of 
the most well-bred and the most cultured. But I, for one, never 
doubted. Just so, among ourselves, the well-born and the well- 
educated, there are men who are clowns in manners and hogs in 
taste. Not the slightest difference between my two girls. No- 
body can pretend that there isw Yet, the moment the truth is 
declared, the world will cry out that they knew it all along, and 
always said so, and it never had been any secret which of the 
two was of gentle birth. No one, as yet,-has ventured to say 
that one of you is less gracious, less generous, less well-bred, less 
a gentlewoman, than the other. There is nothing in the world 
so good as to be gentle, and one of you, my dears, is as gentle as 
the other. And your brother Claude, my dear Polly,” she 
added, still looking between the two, is as gentle as yourself. 
One of you must learn that you do not belong to gentle blood. 
I trust she will learn it without regret and without false shame. 
If Beatrice will divide what is in her power to share, and Polly 
will accept it, I shall be very glad. But if not, one of you is an 
heiress, and the other has nothing. Nothing ? Oh, yes, my chil- 
dren, she has our love, the love of Beatrice and myself, and she 
will always be, in all things, my daughter and her sister ; and 
she has more than Beatrice, because she has a brother of whom 
she may be justly proud. Patience, Claude ! I will give your 
sister to you in a few minutes !” 

Nobody moved — nobody spoke — while Lady Mildred paused 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


437 


to collect herself. Then she continued, still looking between 
the two girls and holding them each by one hand : 

As for you, Beatrice, you become to-day mistress of your 
father’s house, estates, and fortune ; you have a great many acres 
of land, which used to mean a great many thousands a year, but 
they do not mean so much now ; you have investments which 
have been accumulating for you; you have houses — this very 
house is yours, with all that is in it. You have become to-day 
a person of very great importance; you will be courted wher- 
ever you go, for your fortune, and you will be told that it is for 
your beauty and your cleverness. You will be assailed by all 
kinds of persons who want money ; there will be plenty of people 
ready to assure you that you have all the virtues. No one can 
possibly have a more difficult position than an heiress, my dear. 
I am very sorry for you, and I am sure you will thank me for 
keeping you so long from knowing the truth. It is a grievous 
misfortune, my child, for anybody, and especially for any young 
man or young woman, to be rich, I do not think any one should 
be allowed by law to be rich until he is at least fifty years of 
age, and I doubt whether most people are ready to take upon 
themselves the burden of wealth even then. Perhaps sixty is 
too soon for most.” 

" Violet.” She kissed her, and the girl started and turned 
quite pale, and trembled. Let me give you to your brother. 
Claude, she is your sister. This is little Polly-which-is-Marla. 
Valentine, let me restore you to your own name. You are 
henceforth Beatrice, only daughter of Sir Lancelot Eldridge.” 

“ Oh ! no, no T’ said Valentine, I will never change my name ; 
I shall always be Valentine,” 

“ Claude,” cried Violet, “ I was perfectly certain of it, always, 
from the very beginning ; I remembered the wet sheets and the 
clothes-lines; I am sure I did; my own brother! You would 
rather it had been Valentine — you are disappointed in your sis- 
ter ; I am very sorry for your sake.” 

Indeed, Violet — indeed I am not disappointed.” He did 
not say, though it was in his mind, that he was very glad it was 
not Valentine ; nor did he — though that too was in his mind — 
inform her that her father was lying dead at that moment in 
the parish mortuary. He kissed her solemnly, and rather awk- 
wardly, on the forehead ; it takes time to learn how a sister 


438 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


should be kissed, and, in fact, there are many ways : the simple, 
chaste salute on the brow is much in use as a formal acknowledg- 
^ ment of relationship, especially w'hen people are no longer young ; 
a common way is for the brother to kiss his sister on both cheeks, 
one after the other, while he holds her head in his two hands. 
But this is only for quite young people, and when brother and 
sister do really love each other. A girl’s lips must always, of 
course, be left for her lover. They are sacred, 

“ Valentine has had you all to herself for three months,” she 
said, blushing at his embrace ; “ you must think of her already 
as your sister — not of me at all. But it is my turn now, Claude. 
Let us try to be a good deal to each other ; I am selfish, and I 
hate — oh ! how I hate — rough things ; I can never go to Hox- 
ton. But the w’orld is not all Hoxton, is it ? There are other 
places and other things ; you won’t be always pulling people 
out of the mire and getting into a rage about injustices and work- 
girls, will you ?” 

“ No, Violet ; we will try to be a good deal to each other.” 
But his eyes wandered from her, and rested upon Valentine. 

Then Violet, in her quick way, turned to Valentine, still hold- 
ing Claude’s hand tightly. “ My dear, who should be Beatrice if 
not you ? If it had been me,” she added, with more feeling than 
grammar, “ I must have abdicated in your favor. As for shar- 
ing your fortune — ” 

“You shall,” said Valentine; “of that I am fully and abso- 
lutely resolved.” 

Then Violet turned to Lady Mildred. Her eyes w’ere very 
bright and her cheeks flushed. 

“ You have kissed me so often when I was Violet,” she said ; 
“kiss me now, when I am only Polly — Polly-which-is-Marla. 
We will go and live together, Claude and I, the children of the 
gutter ; we will live somewhere, but not in Hoxton — not in Hox- 
ton. I will set up my easel and paint. Perhaps I shall be able 
to sell my pictures, and I shall sign them Marla Monument, or 
Polly Monument, or Polly-which-is-Marla Monument, whichever 
Claude likes best. As for the fortune, I would die rather than 
take any of it. Sometimes you will let me come and see Valen- 
tine, won’t you ? I couldn’t live without seeing her sometimes 
— just to tell her how the princess likes the rags. We have 
often talked together about the princess and the rags.” 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


439 


“ Oh, my dear — my dear !” cried Lady Mildred, distressed. 
“You do not understand. You are never to leave me, you are 
always my daughter — my Violet. Everything is exactly as be- 
fore, only that I have given you a brother.” 

She had also, Claude reflected, given her a large and very in- 
teresting family. But no mention was made of them on this 
occasion. 

Then Lady Mildred drew Valentine away and left the brother 
and sister alone. 

“ I must confess to you, my brother,” Violet said, “ I must 
tell you the whole truth, if you despise me for it. Claude, I 
have always feared this day. Ever since I learned the story of 
Polly’s parentage, I have had a presentiment. Oh, it was a cer- 
tainty that I was the Polly, and not Valentine at all. Don’t 
despise me too much, Claude. I was so selflsh that I longed 
for it to be otherwise. I longed to be Beatrice, not for her 
money, but for her family. Don’t hate me more than you can 
help, Claude. I loathed the thought of going back to those 
poor working-people. When Lady Mildred told me that you 
were coming, I pictured a workman, and I was crimson with 
shame. Don’t despise me more than you can help, Claude. 
Then sometimes, when we went about together, I have seemed 
to hear all the women whispering — you know how kind women 
can be to each other ! — and saying, ‘ What right has this com- 
mon girl among us ? Let her go back to her own people.’ Why, 
let me confess it all, I have even prayed that I might be Beatrice. 
And all the time, Valentine was so unselfish and so ready to 
meet her — other people — Claude,” she clung to him and looked 
into his eyes for some sign of forgiveness. “ Don’t — don’t de- 
spise me too much.” 

“ There is no question of despising, my sister.” He should 
have kissed her again at this point, but he was unused to sisters 
and did not know how such a step would have been received. 
“ I have known the secret for three months, Violet. Do not 
speak of forgiveness.” 

“ You have known that Valentine was not your sister ? And 
yet — ” 

“ And yet I have pretended. Finish your confession, if you 
have anything more to say, and then you will be happier.” 

“ Well, then — when we actually went to see them— when we 


440 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


talked with Joe and with Melenda, oh ! and with Sam, it was 
dreadful. It was more than I could hear. I can never go again 
to face Melenda and hear her dreadful abuse. You will not ask 
me to go there again, will you, Claude ? I will go to see my 
mother — sometimes — with Valentine, but not the others — not 
just yet. Perhaps in a year or two, one might be able to see 
Sam or Joe, one at a time, you know, and for a few minutes. 
Valentine will take me, perhaps, because she is not afraid of 
them. But not Melenda.” 

“ You shall never go, Violet, unless you wish to go. They do 
not expect you to go. Valentine has a message for you from 
them. You shall stay here, my sister, and live on in your world 
of Art and things Beautiful. Only, don’t let it become an En- 
chanted Land. Remember that outside there are always the 
men and women who work.” 

“ Mother,” said Valentine, an hour later, when the family so- 
licitor had put the papers back into the box and gone his way 
with the junior partner ; “ mother, I have a confession to make 
to you.” 

“ What is it, dear ?” 

“ Only that I knew the secret from the very first day. Claude’s 
mother told me.” 

“ Why, she is blind ?” 

“Yes; but she told me about the dimple in her cheek and 
the mark on the arm, which Violet has. But Claude never knew 
or suspected. That would have spoiled all. It was the thought 
that I was his sister which made him so ready to work for me, 
and so thoughtful.” 

“ It might have been so, Valentine ; it was so proposed by 
me ; but, most unfortunately, you see, Claude discovered the 
secret about the same time. His brother Joe told him. And 
Joe seems to have found it out from Violet’s resemblance to her 
father. So, after all, the only one kept in the dark has been 
Violet.” 

“ Oh, is it possible? Could Claude know? Yet he always 
behaved exactly like a brother ; and I thought — 

“Yes, dear; you were both acting a deceitful part all the 
time. Yet it was a very good thing for you that Claude played 
his part so well, without speaking of yourself, because it secured 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


441 


the services of an honorable and very deserving young man for 
you. It was unfortunate for him, because he naturally — I am 
not blaming him for it, mind — it was quite natural that he 
should fall in love with you.” 

“ Oh, mother !” Her cheek flushed quick. 

“ And of course, considering his birth and relations, even if 
it were not for this miserable story of his father, which he has 
told me, and which Violet must never be suffered to learn, he 
clearly understands that he must never speak to you on the sub- 
ject.” 

Lady Mildred paused, but Valentine made no reply. Her 
cheeks were crimson and her lips trembling. 

“ I have talked the matter over with him. Claude is honorable 
and reasonable, as I expected he would be. My dear, he is a 
gentleman, though his father is a convict and a ticket-of -leave 
man and his mother was a washerwoman. Claude is a gentle- 
man. Be quite easy in your mind, my child. He understands 
the position perfectly.” 

“ The position ?” 

Lady Mildred went on, slowly, as if she were considering every 
word carefully, and watching her daughter as if she were looking 
for the effect of her words. 

“ You need be under no misapprehensions about his behavior, 
and I am sure you will meet him half-way, and continue in your 
old friendly relations, just as when you each thought the other 
filled with brotherly and sisterly affection. The dreadful dis- 
grace that has befallen him in this monstrous father of his need 
not make much difference for you.” 

“ Disgrace ? For Claude ? What disgrace can attach to him 
because his father is a wretch ?” 

“ My dear, the world would consider it a disgrace. To be sure, 
the world never knows more than half the facts, and never makes 
allowance. And as regards your future relations with Claude, 
you will find him quite willing always to be your servant. All 
his life, since you have accepted his services.” 

“ My servant ? Claude ?” 

“ He is really a very loyal and honorable boy. I am proud of 
my share in him. I have studied him for twelve years now, 
and have learned to think better of him every day. There is 
nowhere a young man who has greater command of himself, or, 
19 "^ 


442 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


I believe, greater abilities, or is more trustworthy. He has as- 
sured me — and you may accept that assurance fully — that 
neither by word nor look will he ever make you feel that he 
has ventured to love you.” 

“ Oh, mother, I cannot bear it !” 

“ That is arranged, then. You like him and you trust him ; 
you have proved him true ; you have already accepted his ser- 
vices ; you have taken from him his profession and his career — 
in fact, the future of distinction which awaited him ; you have 
plunged into work which may very likely fail, and perhaps keep 
him in obscurity all his life. So that I think you are really 
bound to be friendly towards him.” 

Valentine tried to speak, but she could not. The tears stood 
in her eyes, and her voice failed her. 

“ Of course, he has done all this out of pure love for you. It 
is quite right that you should know this. You, of course, my 
dear, must look for a very different kind of alliance. Sir Lance- 
lot’s daughter may take any place. Your birth, your fortune, 
and your beauty, my child, entitle you to be ambitious, and I do 
not doubt that a very good position indeed will be yours. The 
mere idea of a young man with such connections presuming — 
but Claude does not presume. He is a very good boy, poor fel- 
low ! and it will always be pleasant for you to remember, even 
when you are married and have other duties, that you possess 
what very few women have — a truly loyal and faithful servant 
working for you among the poor ; always humble and obscure, for 
your sake ; desiring nothing better, for your sake ; contented to 
have sacrificed himself and everything — all for love of you !” 

“ Oh, mother !” She fell, sobbing, at her mother’s knees. 
“ You kill me. You kill me !” 

“ Why, Valentine — why ? Beatrice, my dear, what is it ?” 

“ Because — because — how can you talk of my marrying — any 
other man ?” She whispered the last words, burying her face in 
her hands. 

“ Do you mean it seriously, my daughter ?” Lady Mildred 
smiled, unobserved by her child — “ do you mean that you can 
actually love this young man? My dear, remember what you 
are, and what he is — the son of a convict, actually the son of a 
disgraceful felon, a professional thief and rogue, a man who was 
convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years’ penal servitude for 


CHILDREN OF GIBBON. 


443 


burglary with attempt at murder — and his mother only a washer- 
woman — his brother a plumber or locksmith, or whatever he calls 
himself, and his sister a working-girl of the very lowest kind ; 
and all their friends, no doubt, such as one may expect. This 
would be a very pretty family connection for Sir Lancelot El- 
dridge’s daughter, not to speak of myself ? Am not I to be con- 
sidered ? Is there to be an absolute ignoring of rank and birth ? 
Are we to have no pride at all in our family ? Why, there never 
was anybody prouder of his family than Sir Lancelot !” 

“ Claude is — Claude,” Valentine replied ; “ what do I care 
about his family ? Besides, they all know me, and I know them, 
and they love me — and I” — she murmured, softly — “oh! I 
love Claude !” 

“ Then, my dear,” said Lady Mildred, “ I withdraw my oppo- 
sition. Make your own choice — marry whom you please. You 
will have your faithful servant still, whether you marry him or 
not. But there is one dreadful difficulty in the way.” 

“ What difficulty ?” 

“ I am afraid it is an insuperable difficulty. Claude will never 
break that resolution of his — he will never speak to you of love. 
Oh I my poor child, you will — actually — have — to ask him your- 
self !” 


CHAPTER THE LAST. 

VALENTINE SPEAKS. 

She would have, some time, to speak to her lover, who would 
never speak to her. This is a thing which a girl does not for- 
get in a hurry. It was not until the end of the year, the very 
last day in the year, that she did speak, and then she was con- 
strained by a force strong enough to break through her womanly 
reserve. 

They were at Bournemouth, whither, in late October, Valen- 
tine brought the dying girl and her friends. A change to Bourne- 
mouth would not save her ; no change of place and air would 
save her, any more than a change of climate would save the poor 
wretch over whom the great car of Juggernaut has passed, crush- 
ing bones and grinding limbs. All the year round this great car 
of ours moves slowly onwards, crushing the limbs of hapless 


444 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


women, and pounding and beating them to death. Some of us 
have eyes to see them writhing beneath the wheels, and each 
says to each — of those, that is, who do have eyes to see — that it 
is not his fault. No ; it is nobody’s fault, but perhaps some day 
the working-men as well will receive eyes to see their suffering, 
and ears to hear their cries, and then they will perhaps try to 
find the remedy which we have failed to find. Not all of the^m 
have the good-fortune that befell Lotty in being taken out of 
the noise and the dirt, the privation and the hunger, for just a 
few weeks, a brief holiday, after her eight years’ suffering, of 
peace and rest. Happy girl ! To be lapped in love and plenty, 
though all her bones were broken, and though life was ebbing 
rapidly away. Happy girl ! To forget, before she died, the ex- 
istence of the sweater and the manufacturer; to feel no more 
the weight of that accursed law of elevenpence ha’penny, even 
though the day was swiftly drawing near when there would be 
set up, in the green churchyard upon the hillside, among the 
multitudes of white marble crosses, one more to mark the rest- 
ing-place of an obscure girl slowly and cruelly done to death. 
Yet no one’s fault. No, it is no one’s fault. 

When first Lotty came she could be wheeled about a little in 
a chair; the sun was still warm at midday, the yellow leaves 
were still on the trees, there were still flowers in the great gar- 
den of the town ; they could watch the sea, mysterious, wonder- 
ful, to girls who had never seen it before, and listen to the plash 
of the water upon the shore, and breathe the fragrance of the 
pines. But very soon the sun lost his warmth even at noon, 
and the days grew short and cold, and Lotty went out no more. 

Then she sat in a warm room where Valentine ministered to 
her and Melenda nursed her day and night, her mind filled with 
sweet thoughts and gentle hopes, which she had never known 
before Valentine came to her, so that her death-bed was indeed 
to her an opening of the gate of life. The whole of the dread- 
ful past was clean forgotten ; she remembered no more the long 
and weary days with the never-ending click of needle and thim- 
ble, and the slow-creeping hours, the dull pain in her back, the 
hunger of the time, the sleepless nights, when she longed to 
moan aloud but would not, for fear of disturbing the girls asleep 
in the same bed with her. Ivy Lane was far away ; it receded 
farther every day; the girls had never been there; it was a 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


445 


dream ; always she had been sitting in this soft chair, and lying 
on the soft bed, eating grapes, while Valentine read to her or 
made sweet music for her, or while she gazed through one of 
those twelve gates, which are never shut by day or night, into the 
wondrous city. And always Melenda quiet and subdued, and 
never in a rage, and Lizzie contented and happy. 

There came a day — it was the last day of the year — when the 
poor child was to feel her pain no more. She was lying with a 
smile upon her lips, and in her soft and tender eyes as they rested 
on Valentine or on Melenda lay love unspeakable. They all knew 
— she knew herself — that she was dying. At the foot of the bed 
stood Lizzie, weeping without restraint, and at the head Melenda, 
dry-eyed, self-contained, sat holding Lotty’s white, long fingers. 
She would cry when she could do nothing more, but not till then. 

‘‘Dear Lotty,” whispered Valentine, bending over her, “your 
troubles are nearly over now.” 

Lotty made no reply. Her heavy eyes rolled slowly round till 
they rested on Melenda. 

“ There is no more sorrow, dear,” Valentine went on, “ nor 
any pain left for you. Perhaps you will see us all again soon : 
Melenda, and Lizzie, and me.” 

The dying girl made answer none. In her last moments she 
was back again, in imagination, among the shirts and button-holes. 

“ Never mind what they said, Melenda dear,” she murmured, 
her eyes wandering as if there were something she did not quite 
understand. “ Them Germans do swear awful and call dreadful 
names, but never mind what they said ; don’t get into a rage ; 
what does it matter so long as they give us the work ?” 

“ Lotty, there is no more work ; it is all done,” said Valen- 
tine, “ all done and put away — and paid for,” she added. “ Oh ! 
it is paid for, with this.” 

“ The room gets hot, doesn’t it, in the afternoon, and the days 
get longer and longer. Oh ! Melenda, it’s you who do all the 
work. It’s my back, dear — I must lay down again. Give Lizzie 
ray bread and butter, dear, when she comes in. I don’t want any 
dinner when I’m laying down. Poor Liz, she’s always hungry, 
isn’t she ? Don’t be hard on Liz, Melenda. Think of Tilly.” 

Melenda clenched her hands and set her lips ; but her eyes 
were dry. 

“ When Tilly comes home again, Melenda, we won’t be cruel 


446 


CHILDREN OF GIDEON. 


to her and drive her away, will we ? Let us take her back again, 
and pretend we don’t know. Oh ! Melenda — she was so dread- 
ful poor, and she was always an impatient one. She wasn’t 
brave and strong, like you.” 

Valentine stepped back, so that the girl’s eyes should fall on 
no one but her old companion. 

“ I haven’t done much work lately, have I ? because I’ve been 
so bad, but I feel better now. There’s no pain in my back to- 
day, and I shall soon be quite well. The doctor said so — and 
Valentine — who is Valentine? Melenda” — her eyes were full 
now of a vague yearning as if after something unknown — “ Me- 
lenda, we’ve been friends, haven’t we ? — we’ve always been 
friends.” 

She closed her eyes, and her hands dropped. Melenda kissed 
her, breaking out into passionate cries and weeping. But Lizzie 
stopped crying, and laid the limbs straight, and folded the arms 
across her breast. For Lotty was dead. 

When Claude came in the afternoon, Valentine led him into 
the room where the dead girl lay. 

“ See,” she whispered. “ This is the beautiful face she was 
meant to have. You can discern it now, though the cheek is so 
thin. Did you think our poor Lotty could ever have been half 
so pretty ? Her face was smirched and spoiled by our cruelty 
and neglect and apathy, not by any sins of her own, poor child ! 
Since she ceased to work she has grown daily more beautiful — 
and now she is dead. As the doctor said, what better thing 
could befall her? Oh, Claude, we have been Christians for 
nearly two thousand years, and we can say still that the best 
thing for thousands among us is to die.” 

“ Are we Christians ?” he replied. ‘‘ Have we, even yet, be- 
gun to understand what Christianity means ?” 

Presently they left the chamber and went out together upon 
the cliff. It was a still afternoon, with a clear sky and no wind, 
and in the west there was a glorious winter sunset. WTien the 
sun had quite gone down there arose a splendid afterglow, red 
and rosy, high in the western sky, and reflected in the ocean, 
full of consolation and of hope ; and below their feet the quiet 
waters lapped upon the shore. Behind them, in the east, there 
was a blackness in the sky that could be felt. 


CHILDREN OF GIBEON. 


447 


Claude,” slie whispered, “ we are still in the presence of the 
dead. This place is like a church ; and — oh ! I can speak at last.” 

“ Speak, Valentine. What is it you would say ?” 

My mother tells me you have confessed things — things about 
me. And that you said foolish things about your father’s sins 
and your own — inheritance. And that your lips were sealed.” 

“ They were not foolish things, Valentine ; they were real 
things. How could such as myself ask you to share with me 
my inheritance of shame ?” 

“Oh, Claude ! Have I not shared it already ? Can I ever 
cease to share it ? Forget that foolishness. Besides — you are — 
yourself. We are not brother and sister; you have known that 
all along, and so have I. There lies a great garden at our feet, 
where we can work — if we work together — always together. 
Claude, have I said enough ? Oh ! do not ask me to say more.” 

He took her hand and kissed it. He bent his head and met 
her lips and kissed them. But he could not speak for a while. 
Presently he found a voice. 

“ Oh, my queen !” he murmured. “ Oh, my mistress ! Oh, 
my lady and my love !” She raised her head, while the red 
light in the west filled her eyes and made them wondrous. 

“ Hand in hand, Claude, all our lives.” 

So, almost beside the girl’s dead body, these lovers were be- 
trothed. 

The afterglow died in the west ; the last day of the year was 
over ; the past was done ; but in their hearts there sprang the 
new light of another day. 


THE END, 




' 5 

4 « 

< 



• 1 


BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON. 


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